) 




—^ 








\ 



* 



SNOWS 



MODERN BARN SYSTEM 



OF RAISING AND CURING TOBACCO. 



rOURTH EDIT 












baltimc b i 

the friedexwa: : 



Copyright, 1895. 

BV 

W. II. SNOW. 



SPECIAL NOTICE. 

After three years of costly litigation the writer and patentee 
holds all the patents and trade-marks which he formerly assigned 
to the Modern Barn Company, and is now prepared to sell terri- 
tory and tobacco sticks and baskets and material of all descrip- 
tion used in the construction of barns. 

During the last three years the Snow process of curing tobacco 
has received marked attention from seven different States, whose 
Experimental Stations have issued bulletins highly commending 
the new method, and in some States have entered into an ex- 
haustive analysis of the tobacco after curing, fully demonstrating 
the superiority of the new plan, while W. F. Clark received the 
highest award at the World's Fair for tobacco grown in Louisiana 
and cured in the Snow Barn for cigar and chewing tobacco. 

My inventions are fully covered and protected by a number of 
Letters Patent of the United States. The short cross wire with 
its sharp fixed points settles forever the process of the leaf cure. 
As the placing of the eye in the point of the needle held the per- 
fect sewing machine and prevented any man from defrauding its 
inventor, we intend that our device shall be held for the benefit 
of the man who invented it. There have been, and we expect 
there will be, many attempts to rob the inventor of the fruits of 
his labor by evasion of his patented rights. None have succeeded 
and none can succeed. 

My patents cover, among other things, all tobacco sticks with 
projecting prongs on each side, at right angles to the stick, by 
any and all permanent means of attachment, no matter how 
attached or fastened. 

I will, at any cost, protect customers as well as myself against 
any attempt to evade or infringe upon my rights by using, mak- 
ing or selling any part of our patented inventions. I give this 
early notice of my purpose that no one may have trouble. .\ 1 \ 
next move will be action. 

W. H. SNOW, 

January, 1895. High Point, X. C. 



PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 

In offering to tobacco growers the fourth edition of my bo< >k. 
my aim is not to add anything new, except so far as the rapid 
strides of the " Modern Barn " and " Stick for Log Barn " wire- 
curing process seem to call for it. 

My former pamphlets and circulars have made tobacco growers 
throughout the country so well acquainted with the merits of my 
process that it seems superfluous to add anything. But the de- 
mand for "more light" has been so steady, and the calls for the 
book so numerous, that the previous editions have been entirely 
exhausted. My present object is to comply with the requests of 
my friends in all parts of the tobacco region, and to answer, gen- 
erally, the many questions which are constantly asked me. The 
enormous growth of my correspondence ha,- made this method a 
necessity. I ^h' not expect to be able to fully accomplish my pur- 
pose, but will hereafter endeavor, as I have heretofore clone, to 
reply to all letter.- as promptly as possible. To my patrons and 
others I still say: I will never grow weary of reading and 
answering such letters as I am daily receiving. I take this oppor- 
tunity of returning my thanks to the great multitude who have 
so ably helped me to make tobacco growing and curing a source 
of pleasure and profit to the farmer. 

Address correspondence to 

W. IT SNOW, 

January, lS,,; High Paint, X. C 



INTRODUCTION. 

The production of tobacco is one of the great industries of our 
country. Its use is considered by a great portion of our people 
a necessity. Tobacco forms an important expense account with 
such people, and if it be claimed that it is only a luxury, it is the 
only luxury they have, and one which is indulged in with the 
least possible injury to the human system. " The laborer in the 
gloomy mines, the honest tiller of the soil, the hard-worked rail- 
roader, and the busy man of the counting-room, all go about 
their tasks with lighter hearts under the mild and soothing influ- 
ence of tobacco. From early in life until the shadows of twilight 
begin to gather about him, man's most constant companion is 
the bewitching weed. Other friends may leave him, his bosom 
companions pass away, and the vigor of youth give place to tot- 
tering age, but tobacco remains to soothe his sadness and cheer 
the gloom of his life." He is entitled to have it in its best pos- 
sible form. In money value Tobacco stands number seven among 
our field crops, and aggregates six hundred millions pounds 
annually. It brings the planters nearly seventy-two millions dol- 
lars each year and the manufacturers as much more, making one 
hundred and forty-four millions in the industry. 

There is great need for a scientific method of cultivating and 
curing the crop, which is wholly wanting at the present time. 
'• A great mystery doth hedge about" the industry. There are 
a great many varieties of tobacco and almost as many methods of 
cultivating and curing; all these methods cannot be right. The 
great bulk of tobacco grown at the present time is cured as the 
Indians cured the weed four hundred years ago. Demonstration 
has conclusively proved that the red man's method is based 
neither upon science nor economy. It is wasteful in both virtue 



and quantity from even* point of view. The white man, with few 
exceptions, has blindly followed his red brother's tobacco trail, the 
only deviation being that the white man builds a shed to shelter 
his tobacco from the storms, while his red brother hung his 
tobacco on the bushes or in the peak of his wigwam to dry it. 
To shed the light of science, to group common sense methods, to 
help the planter out of the uncertain blind way in which he is now 
groping, is the object of this little book. 

The 12th of October, 1892, completes the fourth century 
since the discovery of the Western Hemisphere by Columbus. 
At the same time Columbus reports the natives of the new world 
smoking the dried leaves of herbs which they called tobac, rolled 
in the leaves of maize. There have been many speculations and 
suppositions indulged in, that the Chinese or the Hindoos or the 
Persians had a knowledge of tobacco before its discovery by 
Columbus. But neither Moses, Herodotus, Pliny or Josephus, 
or any historian previous to the discovery of America, gives us 
any light on this subject. It is therefore safe to believe that 
tobacco is a native of the Western Hemisphere, and from here it 
has spread over the face of the whole earth, among even- kindred, 
tongue and condition of mankind. It numbers among its de- 
votees the highest type of civilized and enlightened men, as well 
as the lowest and most barbarous; even' age, sex and condition 
use the exhilarating weed. The edicts of crowned heads, the bulls 
of popes, the assembled wisdom of legislative bodies, the stern 
commands of parental authority are all alike powerless to even 
check its use in the slightest degree. The dread of present or 
future punishment has no terrors for the man, woman or child who 
has once tasted the seductive weed. Much has been written about 
the effect the constant use of tobacco has on the human race. So 
far the testimony is neutral. There is no evidence going to show 
that any race of men are less hardy or have abated in mental 
calibre during the four hundred years of the constant use of the 
weed. When we come down to individuals, there are as manv 



centenarians who have smoked and chewed tobacco as can be 
found among the abstainers. Many die young who never use 
tobacco, and many live to a ripe old age who have used the weed 
from their youth up. That it is harmful to the human race col- 
lectively there is no evidence; believing this to be so, we think it 
highly commendable to give the weed to those who love it in its 
best form and at the least cost. This shall be our aim, and if 
our plans are followed, we will give a choice chew, a choice 
smoke and a choice cigar at the price now paid for the cheap, 
poor stuff, which forms the bulk of the goods now on the market, 
which are exceedingly unwholesome and give no pleasure to the 
man who uses them. The evil lies mainly in a bad system by 
which the leaf is cured, while the faulty system has nothing better 
than custom to recommend it. 



CHAPTER I. 

The successful growing of tobacco pays the planter a better 
price for his labor and expenditure than any other field crop. 
The uncertainty of the crop hedges it about with a mystery. The 
difference between a crop handled right and a crop equally good 
in the field and handled wrong is so great that many times it 
appears to the uninitiated like gambling, when the facts are the 
planter had all the cards in his hand to win his money, but failed 
to do his part at the right time and lost. That the business of 
tobacco growing can be reduced to a science and made as sure 
as the production of any other crop grown in our fields the writer 
feels certain. During the last five years tobacco raising has been 
made plain and has been tested by thousands of planters in five 
different States, and in no instance made known to us has there 
been a single failure to obtain good results when the planter fol- 
lowed our advice. This has been so uniformly the case in all 
parts of the country and in all varieties of tobacco that we are 
fortified in the belief that we have found the true science of grow- 
ing and curing tobacco; and furthermore we have greatly re- 
duced the cost and simplified the process of the manufacture of 
plug, smoking tobacco and cigars. Let no man think a crop of 
tobacco can be grown without care of the right kind bestowed 
at the right time; vigilance always is the price paid for a good 
crop of tobacco. " Intensive farming " is the kind of farming 
that will give the best results always in the cultivation of tobacco. 
It will pay better to grow fifteen hundred pounds on one acre 
than to grow sixteen hundred on two acres, — the plowing, the 
suckering, the topping, the worming, and the gathering consume 
twice the time and only one-sixteenth more tobacco of an inferior 
grade. 



CHAPTER II. 

" He that goeth forth bearing good seed shall return with joy 
and bring his sheaves with him." This was a subject well under- 
stood in King David's time, and is as true now as then. To 
ignore this great underlying principle is to court failure in all 
crops. 

The first great requisite is good seed of the right variety. If a 
planter thinks any kind of seed will do as well as any other he 
has made a failure in the beginning of the crop. Blood tells on 
the race course; the " two-thirteen " trotters are not bred from 
scrubs, neither sire nor dam. 

The dairyman seeks carefully for the pure-bred Jerseys and 
Devons when he wants a large yield of milk and butter; the wool 
grower seeks the pure-bred merinos for a heavy fleece of wool, 
or southdowns for heavy quarters of mutton; the pork raiser has 
long since learned that a bushel of corn returns him twice the 
money fed to a Poland China or a Jersey Red swine of pure breed 
than when fed to a bush hog with his ears set in the middle of his 
back. Rust-proof oats, fulcaster wheat, Bullock seed corn, all 
tell the planter that it will pay him to look well to the quality and 
variety of his tobacco seed ; the seed should be renewed every two 
or three years. 

The seed should be brought from the shorter to the longer 
season; from the colder to the warmer. Never from the south 
northward if it can be avoided. If the planter saves his own 
seed from his own crop, let him save only the most vigorous 
plants, and then only the earliest pinnacles and but few of them 
on each stalk. A man is safe if he allows Col. R. L. Ragland to 
send him his seed every year; his postofrice is Hyco, Va. ; "the 
world buys tobacco seed of him." If you wish to grow tobacco 
exclusively for plug or choice chewing tobacco, the Hester, the 
Orinoco, or Gooch are varieties which have stood the test of 
time, and are favorites with many planters. The writer's experi- 
ence has been satisfactory with the Hester; for cutters the Hyco 
and the White Stem stand at the head for South Carolina, North 
Carolina and Georgia. For cigars, the Zimmer Spanish, when 



IO 

cultivated and cured right, has few superiors in texture and none 
in flavor; it will produce twelve hundred pounds per acre. The 
Connecticut seed leaf stands at the head for wrapping cigars, and 
will probably never be excelled for that purpose ; when it is cured 
in the Snow Barn the Sumatra wrapper takes a back seat. The 
Cumstock Spanish is also highly spoken of as a fine grower, and 
gives satisfaction to the cigar maker and smoker. The Havana 
seed leaf is grown by Col. Ragland, and as he is a scientific seed 
grower it is safe to get his seed. If the writer was growing 
tobacco in States south of Virginia, we would depend on that 
latitude for our seed, as it would travel in the right direction, from 
the north to the south; its vitality and time of maturity would be 
quickened by each remove towards the equator. 



II 



CHAPTER III. 



PLANT I5EDS. 



The tobacco plant differs in some respects from most others in 
this: it grows faster, matures quicker, and produces richer leaves 
when pulled up and transplanted, than if the seed were planted 
like corn or beans and allowed to stand and grow where planted; 
hence the universal custom of growing the plants in hot beds or 
seed beds. The seed of the plant is the smallest known to the 
husbandman; a single ounce contains eight hundred and seventy- 
five thousand seeds; if every seed should produce a plant, one 
ounce would furnish plants for one hundred and seventy-five 
acres, counting five thousand plants per acre. The plant question 
is a very important one with the planter, and his best effort is 
put forth to obtain good plants for his first setting, and should be 
as early as the season in his latitude will allow and escape late 
frost. The plan most in use in Virginia is too seek the bank of 
some small creek in some sheltered spot, and burn the ground 
over with trash wood to the depth of two inches, and rake in the 
ashes with manure; thoroughly pulverize the top of the soil, and 
sow the seed and cover with canvass. This is done about the 
first of January, when the plants will be set the first of May. 
While this plan is a cheap one, and does well for Virginia and 
North Carolina, there are a great many who wish to grow 
tobacco that are not blessed with a creek running through their 
farms, and the uncertainty of the beds getting the attention 
needed at the proper time, while the plant bed is so far from 
home, the writer is inclined to adopt a more sure way, which is 
the hot-bed system, right at home, where the beds can be watched 
and watered at will, and kept back or forced as the planter wills. 
In this way the planter commands success; he can put forth his 
hand and grasp it ; and while his neighbor is scouring the country 
buying plants from his neighbors, and setting his crop with ever>' 
known variety, which will not give him a uniform crop either in 
the field or curing barn ; hundreds fail here at the start. The 
failure in a tobacco crop can as often be traced to the plant bed 



12 

as to any one cause. Knowing by hard experience the import- 
ance of these facts, we say to every planter who expects to follow 
tobacco growing, construct at once a hot bed of the most ap- 
proved pattern, in the most convenient and sheltered place about 
your building. The sash should have about six inches fall in 
three feet facing the south. For convenience the bed should 
n< ^ be more than six feet wide and as long as needed ; fill the 
bed within six inches of the top with sandy loam, well mixed 
with well rotted manure and guano; do this in the month of 
November. Give the bed a thorough wetting, and put on the 
sash, and grow your weeds and destroy them before you sow 
your tobacco seed. 

About the first of February, for Georgia and South Carolina, 
sow your seed, gel a straight edge two inches wide and make 
a very slight mark on each side of the strip, and scatter the seed 
along tin- edge of the strip on both sides, then turn the strip 
over; don't sow too thick, nor cover too deep; in fact do not 
cover at all, but pat the top of die ground with a plank with 
your weight on it. When the plants come up the) can be 
thinned out if too thick or re-sowed if too thin. If the plants 
are likely to be too early, they can be kept back by taking off 
the sash or by shading with plank if the sun is too strong in the 
day time; if they are too -low they can be quickened by a liberal 
sprinkling of warm water, leached through horse stable manure. 
The point is to have the right kind of plants at the right time 
at all hazards, and a plenty of them. This is the first important 
step to take if you would make money growing tobacco. In 
taking plants from the beds, which is called drawing "plants" 
great care should be taken not to injure the stem by bruising: 
do not press the bud which is in the middle of the plant; if the 
bud is bruised in any way the plant is useless: the product if 
any, must come from a sucker below the bud. and will be in- 
ferior tobacco. The plants when four inches high are ready for 
setting. In the preceding chapter we strove to impress upon the 
planter the necessity of having good seed, and plenty of stocky 
plants at the first setting: by stocky plants we mean plants that 
have not been grown so thick in the beds as to give them a long 
slender shank. In the following chapter we show the necessity 
of having: or OOC i so ji 



13 
CHAPTER IV. 

GOOD SOIL NECESSARY. 

To grow less than one thousand pounds of tobacco on a single 
acre is not good farming, and twelve hundred pounds should be 
the rule in Georgia and South Carolina. It is thought necessary 
in Virginia and North Carolina to have virgin soil to grow a 
good crop of tobacco. This plan has been practised until these 
states have been largely denuded of their forests, and their hill 
sides seamed with gullies, and strange to say their planters are 
not rich. Cutting down a crop of timber and burning it in log 
heaps to obtain a crop of tobacco is paying dear for a whistle; 
too much sugar for a shilling. 

Good rich tobacco can be grown on old land ; it is being done 
in South Carolina every season, and it can be done elsewhere. 
There is a reason why new soil is better than old land. The 
only one I can give is the top soil is full of vegetable mold; 
this element is lacking in old land. We have got back to first 
principles now; the soil is lacking vegetable matter, nothing left 
but silica of the primeval rock, which in itself is unable to 
sustain plant life, although pulverized by the forces of nature if 
unmixed with vegetable matter, its fertility is wholly wanting. 
This want is starving one half of the farmers in the world; with- 
out this, no man need try to grow good tobacco. In this vege- 
table mold lies the chemistry of all plant food; the humus, the 
very life of the tobacco plant. It is useless to coax Mother 
Earth with nostrums; don't think to feed the hungry soil by 
dusting it with guano applied with a spoon. It is "just over 
the hill to the poorhouse" with such farmers, whether they grow 
tobacco, cotton or corn. This fact being established beyond any 
controversy, and we have set out to grow a good crop of to- 
bacco, not less than one thousand pounds per acre. 

If vegetable matter is lacking in the soil which the planter 
finds otherwise suitable let him sow cow peas and turn them 
under; work with it two years in this way; get three crops of peas 
into the soil by that time, with three hundred pounds of guano 



14 

to the acre; then try a crop of tobacco, and if you will plow in 
your tobacco stalks and suckers before the heavy frosts kill them 
you can continue to grow heavy tobacco year after year on the 
same ground. By returning the old stalks to Mother Earth 
much of the elements required for the new stalks are found in the 
old in a concentrated form; the decomposition of the woody ele- 
ments go to form the humus needed, and with a quantity of 
woods mold added each year tobacco equal to new land tobacco 
can be grown year after year without any deterioration; or 
if the planter has two fields a crop of cow peas every other year, 
and a crop of tobacco every other year, with the tobacco stalks 
plowed in, will keep the crop equal to new land tobacco; and it 
fertilized with guano twelve hundred pounds of good tobacco 
should be the yield per acre. 

This method of obtaining vegetable mold in the soil is less 
expensive than cutting the timber, and clearing new land, and 
for common plug tobacco the product is all that is desired. Let 
the planter bear in mind that vegetable mold is an indispensable 
requisite to the perfection of the tobacco plant, and without it 
failure is the rule. 

Fortunately for the average fanner, it is the cheapest fertilizer 
he can obtain; having selected a field with a sandy top soil with 
a clay base from four to six inches beneath. If the subsoil be 
yellow all the better as this color is supposed to impart its 
peculiar properties to the tobacco grown upon it. In our judg- 
rrient, however, if this color has the right grit, it is extremely 
friable when disturbed by the subsoil plow, and absorbs and 
holds the rain a few inches below the surface, where it is avail- 
able in dry time. The sandy soil lets the rain fall through and 
the clay arrests its passage, and holds it for future use; this kind 
of soil has given the best results in all parts where tobacco has 
been grown. Land of this description should be turned over with 
a turning plow T about the first of January, again in the middle of 
February. At the second plowing the subsoil plow should be 
used about eight inches deep in the furrow\ immediately behind 
the turning plow. Do not turn up any of the subsoil. This 
winter plowing destroys the pupa of the black cricket which pro- 
duce the cut worm, a great pest when the plants are young. 
The chrysalis of the bud worm will be disturbed at the same time, 
and left where the frost will put an end to them; besides the 



15 

winter plowing is as good as a coat of manure, as it gives the 
frost a chance to thoroughly pulverize the lumps in the soil. In 
the winter time when little else can be done the compost heap 
must be made. If we are to grow a crop of ten acres we want 
a big heap. We want all the stable manure we can get. We 
will bed our stock with litter of leaves and loam so as to lose 
none of the sig or liquid manure. We will get all the nitre we 
can into our compost heap. We will haul woods, mold or top 
soil from our timber land and use cotton seed if we have it; we 
will put all kinds of manure, but wood ashes. We will keep 
them out of our compost and apply them broadcast. After we 
think we have enough compost we will get a few more loads for 
fear we may be short, as we have started to get twelve hundred 
pounds per acre, we cannot afford to fail. A few days before we 
are ready to set our plants, we will lay off our rows four feet 
apart with a turning plow, and put out our compost by scatter- 
ing it liberally in the furrows, and cover the same by throwing 
the soil back. We will run our rows when practicable, north and 
south ; this will give every plant in the field equal chance to the 
sun, both morning and evening; the rows should be four feet 
apart to give ample room for the gathering of the leaves with 
baskets, and to get the sun to the roots of the plants, also to 
run the cultivator after the plants are well grown and not bruise 
the leaves, as they are very susceptible to injury while in the 
green state. W r e shall crowd the plants in the row to about twu 
feet as we must get twelve hundred pounds per acre, and we 
must have at least five thousand plants. We want four ounces 
from each plant. The leaves must be normal and shapely as 
only such are the delight of the buyer. To get such, both rich 
and abundant, we give them plenty of room between the rows, 
and crowd them a little in the rows. When we are ready to set 
our plants, we run a bull tongue through our ridge of compost 
and scatter commercial fertilizer about three or four hundred 
pounds to acre along the ridge, and mix with the soil by running: 
the bull tongue- two or three times through each ridge. When 
done the plants can be set. 



i6 



CHAPTER V 



SETTING OUT THE CROP. 



Having found the right soil amply filled with vegetable mold; 
having plenty of good stocky plants about four inches high, well 
seasoned to the open air by leaving the top of the bed open for 
a few days and nights, and no fear of late frost, we will proceed 
to set out our crop. This should be done all at one time in the 
same field if possible, as the setting of crop at different times 
militates greatly against the curer, as there will be a correspond- 
ing difference in the time of ripening of the leaves. This should 
be avoided if possible on at least ten acres which will be the 
capacity of one Snow barn. The acreage designed to be cured 
in one barn sin mid be all of one variet) of tobacco and all set 
at one time and cultivated the same, This is important as will 
soon be found by the curer when he puts the heat on his toba< i 
When real;, to set we run a bull tongue hack and forth in the 
ridges two or three times to mix the guano with the soil. This 
guano is to start the young plant, giving it courage, causing it 
to make large calculations in the first start. Not less than 
twenty leaves are demanded of each plant. They will not eal- 
culate so many on a low diet when young. We are expecting 
twelve hundred pound- of good tobacco from each acre, and 
have a good show for more. It we set our plants by hand we 
must wait for rain or we must water each plant by hand. A 
man goes ahead with a basket filled with plants and drops one 

on the ridge every two feet or twenty inches apart. A g 1 

hand behind him picks up the plant sticks his peg in the ground, 
and makes a hole about two inches deep; sets his plant in the 
hole, resets his peg and pushes the dirt against the roots of the 
plant, and goes on to the next. Care should be taken not to 
cover the bud of the plant with soil, nor press the dirt too hard 
at the top around the neck of the plant, as any bruising or 
strangling is ruin. Care should be taken to keep the rows 
straight, and the bud of the plant near the surface of the ground. 
This is called hand setting, and it is not easy work and requires 



skillful, active men. Some men can set three acres in a day. 
If set with a Bemis transplanter the process is quite another 
thing; the plants are as well or better set in dry weather as in 
wet. The machine is hauled by two horses, carries the driver, 
a cask of water, and two boys, each with a basket of plants hung 
before him. The plants are set and watered, one row at a time. 
Five acres can be set in ten or twelve hours, and the work 
better done than is possible by hand, even with the most skillful 
hands. One machine costing about one hundred dollars will set 
the crop of a dozen planters, and in the quality of the work alone 
will pay its cost every year if fully employed. It will pay the 
planter to buy one as the setting of the crop right, and at the 
right time, is one of the necessary steps to insure success. With 
this machine the farmer chooses his own time, whereas the hand 
setting is often faulty. If the time for setting happens to be dry 
the planter is either compelled to wait for rain or water by hand, 
which is very tedious, and if set in very wet weather the ground is 
apt to form a crust around the neck of the plant, and it will not 
grow until the soil is loosened with the hoe. 



CHAPTER VI. 

WORMING AND CULTIVATING THE CROP. 

The plants now being set they must be constantly cared for, as 
they have many enemies. If provision is not made for their 
protection the work of the planter will come to nothing and his 
labor lost. The most destructive of these enemies is known as 
the horn worm, which if left to himself, will utterly destroy the 
crop, leaving only the bare stalks and stems standing in the 
field. Some seasons they are worse than others, but it is never 
safe to neglect full preparations for their destruction which is 
easily done if taken in time, but very difficult and expensive if 
neglected; but must lie done at any cost. The horn worm is 
hatched from eggs deposited by the Hawk moth on the top 
side of the leaves as he flits from plant to plant during the night, 
never in the day time. Like the owl he seeks dark and shady 
places during the day, and at the setting of the sun, lie starts 
out in quest of his supper, which he is very anxious to get before 
he goes to work; like Artemus Ward who said, "If I have 
much wood to chop before breakfast, I always eat my breakfast 
first." The eggs then deposited on a leaf of tobacco will hatch 
and eat a hole through the leaf in about fifteen hours, and 
in three or four days will destroy a whole leaf and go on to the 
next one. It is estimated that a single fly will lay one hundred 
eggs in one night, and as many as five hundred eggs have been 
counted in the egg pouch of a single moth after being killed. 
Their favorite food is the honey found in the blossom of the 
Jamestown or Jimpson weed. They can be seen any moon- 
light night flying about these blossoms; to supply quantities 
of them and poison them is the most effectual, and by far the 
cheapest way to worm your tobacco. If the worms get on your 
tobacco there is no other way to get them off, but to gc over 
your crop and examine every plant and pick them off by hand. 
If the moths are killed before they lay their eggs there will be 
no worms on your tobacco. Early in the season see to it that 
there are various thrifty clumps of Jimpson weed growing about 
your fields ready at the first appearance of the moth. They come 



19 

about the last of May to the middle of June in Virginia; the 
second crop in August. If the first crop is killed there will be 
but few of the second. When about fifteen days old the worms 
go into the ground where they remain in the pupa state or chry- 
salis form, from which they emerge full-fledged moths, ripe 
for mischief. It takes about two weeks for them to mature their 
eggs, after they are seen flying about. They are like pullets not 
read\- to lay; if properly attended to at this golden time they 
never will lay. Let the planter get a three ounce vial; put in 
one-half ounce of cobalt, same of sugar; fill up with warm water, 
shake well, and let it stand during the day; cut a small crease in 
the cork. Just before sunset go about the Jimpson clumps and 
drop two or three small drops of the liquid in each blossom, 
the fly will suck the poison, and instead of laying eggs on the 
tobacco they will lay on the flat of their back on the ground 
dead. During the tobacco season of eighty-six we picked up 
enough dead flies to fill a hundred pound nail keg full. "An 
ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." This plan of 
worming tobacco is the cheapest possible way. It is the only 
way to prevent the leaves being 'eaten full of holes if the Hawk 
moths are numerous. If a wrapper leaf has holes in it it is 
classed as filler, and the price is reduced one hundred per cent, 
in consequence. If the planter expects to succeed he must suc- 
cessfully manage his crop to the end. 



20 



CHAPTER VII. 



CULTIVATION CONTINULI). 



To get good land, good plants, and good growth will not 
suffice. If he neglects to keep the worms from his crop his 
work goes for naught. It is the neglect of attention at the right 
time to all the details of the cultivation of the crop that makes 
the art of tobacco raising appear so much like a chance in a 
lottery, and success so uncertain. These points cannot be too 
strongly impressed upon all men who embark in tobacco growing. 

It is now supposed that we have set our*tobacco plants and 
liinpson weeds. ( >ur land is filled with vegetable mold, an I 
has been plowed in winter to destroy the cut worms and bud 
worms, which conic from the larva of the black cricket. We 
have not failed to subsoil our land that water from the frequent 
showers may settle into the ground away from the roots of the 
young plants in the earl) spring, the best method to prevent 
frenching: also to store the water which will come back to the 
plants in the form of steam when the ground gets hot in midsum- 
mer. We will now proceed to cultivate our crop and bear in 
mind that we are to harvest twelve hundred pounds of good 
tobacco from each acre planted. If our land lies flat, after we 
have set the plants we will take a one-horse turning plow and 
turn a furrow from the plants on each side, the furrows to be run 
about eight inches from the plants, leaving a ridge about sixteen 
or eighteen inches wide, with the plants in the middle of the ridge. 
The object of this is to drain the water from the roots of the 
plants when young, as often in the heavy May rains the condi- 
tion- are such that the plants cannot grow and the crop is re- 
tarded. The drain formed by the process obviates the danger. 
A few days after the plants are set the whole crop should be 
looked after. A careful inspection of the whole field should be 
made, and every dead or sickly plant should be at once replaced 
by a good one. and set in such a way that there will lie no mis- 
take about its growing. Remember if there are five hundred 
rows in the field, and five plants are missing in each row the 



21 

aggregate loss is equal to one-half acre. At four ounces to the 
plant there will be a loss of eight hundred pounds of tobacco. 
At ten cents per pound this will amount to eighty dollars. At 
twenty cents, to one hundred and sixty dollars. This will be a 
clear loss as the land, the manure, the time in cultivation is the 
same. It takes a plow the same time to pass a given space 
whether the space is vacant or has a thrifty plant standing in it. 
If we look for the twelve hundred pounds we must be sure that 
the necessary plants are set in the field to grow the tobacco. 
The plants will require straightening, and the earth touched up 
about some of them a little, the planter must become acquainted 
with his crop, and see that it is starting off right. When the 
leaves have grown one half the size of his hand, the ridge in the 
middle between the rows should be thrown back into the furrow 
from which they were turned. This will be in about two weeks 
from the time of setting; if the weather is seasonable, the whole 
crop should be carefully gone over with the hoe; the weeds all 
cleaned out. The next time any cultivation is done it should be 
witli the iron age cultivator. The surface of the ground should 
be level and stirred not more than three inches in depth. The 
tobacco is now about one foot high, the roots of the plants have 
started out on their journey in seach of food. They are now 
making their calculations as to the number of leaves they will 
set out to grow. The plants have been very much encouraged 
with three hundred pounds of fertilizer given as a starter. When 
they run up against the vegetable mold they will take new cour- 
age and decide at once on twenty-two leaves, all good sized and 
rich in oil and well favored. This will depend somewhat on the 
season. If dry hot weather is long continued the plant cannot 
assimilate Ml the food given it, and a less number of leaves will 
be the result. 



22 



CHAPTER VIII. 

TOPPING AND SUCKERING. 

Just here comes the rub, here is where many planters stumble. 
The crop may be for some reason a little backward when the 
time comes for topping. Its growth may be slow. The season 
' has been backward, either too wet and cold or too hot and dry. 
The roots may have been standing in wet ground causing the 
plant to run up spindling. If the topping is done at this time 
it is apt to be topped too low. and when the later rains come 
the plant has been robbed of all possible chance to make a 
heavy crop of tobacco. The same planter will prime too high 
and top too low all at the same time, and for the same reason. 
The plants have made calculations to grow twenty-two leaves. 
They have the roots in the ground sufficient to pump the neces- 
sary sap to supply that number. The planter comes along, and 
compels the plant to work only on twerve leaves. The result 
is when the season of rain comes, the whole crop of roots being 
left they pump more sap into the few leaves than they can take 
care of; and the result is large stems and fibres and leaves 
called bull-faced tobacco of little value. The mistake is made 
in topping at the wrong end. From close observation for 
many years I have come to the conclusion that the only place 
that any plant of tobacco should ever be topped is at the bot- 
tom; save only taking off the seed bud. We well know this is 
not orthodox. I have been running in the face and eves of 
old ideas in tobacco growing for the last seven years, and I 
have found many of them wrong in theory and practice, and 
one or two more will do no harm. It is well known that the 
bottom leaves on all plants are light in weight; it takes more 
than twice the leaf surface grown in June to weigh one pound 
than it does of leaves grown in August. How natural it would 
be then to get as many top leaves as possible; especially in a 
latitude where the season is ample in length to grow a full crop. 
Removing the sand lugs, or leaves which are likely to get 
spattered with grit during showers in summer, and giving, the 
sun a chance at the roots of the plant, all testify to the utility 



23 

of doing all the topping at the bottom of the plant. In 
Georgia, South Carolina and Florida I would never under 
any circumstances top lower than merely take out the seed 
bud. Seven months before frost will mature all the leaves 
at the top of the tallest plant. I would see that the plant had 
a plenty of food to last it through the season. As the leaves 
were removed from the bottom of the plant the sap would have 
an uninterrupted flow to the leaves above. During this time 
that we have been looking for the flies that lay eggs on our 
tobacco. We do not mean by this that we have been picking 
worms from our tobacco, but have been killing. the Hawk that 
lays the eggs. The grass has been kept down because there 
is nothing that so soon robs tobacco of its oil as grass. No man 
ever got a good rich waxy leaf of tobacco from a grassy field, 
and knowing this to be so, we keep our grass cleaned out as 
we are determined to grow twelve hundred pounds of good 
tobacco on each acre we plant; and this cannot be done if we 
either starve our plants or allow the grass and weeds to rob 
them of their food. As soon as the plant is topped, that is the 
seed bud is pinched out, there will start from the fork of 
each leaf a sucker. The plant having lost its head — its thing of 
beauty on which every tobacco plant seems to pride itself, 
it will put forth its best endeavor to get a new one. It will 
start a dozen heads at once, and its persistency when the plant 
is topped low is amazing. These suckers must be kept down 
at any cost, as the sap required for a rich leaf will spend itself 
on the suckers, and the result is leaf fibre without virtue or 
value. These suckers should be removed when they are but 
two inches long. They are easily broken then, and have done 
but little damage to the leaf; if left until they get tough the 
leaf is often injured, while the sucker is being removed; besides 
it has been robbing the leaf from the start. When the method 
of curing is by plucking the leaf and topping consequently 
high or no topping at the top, the plant has less inclination to 
put out suckers. As there is a top equal to the root the equili- 
brium of the plant is preserved; it has not been outraged or 
bisected. It has as much top as root; there are as many 
leaves to take up the sap as there are roots to manufacture it. 
It is now high time that we had our curing barn all ready, and 
our packing house to receive our tobacco when cured, as this 
is the turning point. 



2 4 



CHAPTER IX. 



GETTING READY TO CUKE. 



We have gol our crop so far along about the middle of 
June; a little earlier in South Carolina and Georgia. In Vir- 
ginia the middle of July will be the date of the first cures. Our 
barn is read_\- with good dry hard wood, cut three feet long and 
piled under the shed: about one-half cord to each curing. We 
have built us a store or packing house thirty feet by twenty, ten 
fool pitch with good floor at least one foot from the ground, 
weather hoarded and ceiled inside; lined with paper under the 
ceiling, with one door and four windows, built convenient to 
the barn, where the tobacco can he carried from the curing 
barn to the packing house in baskets by hand. 

About the middle of June in S< >uth Carolina, the bottom 
leaves on the majority of the plants will show signs of maturity: 
the tobacco is commencing to ripen, at the bottom only; the 
top leaves are not half grown at this time. These bottom 
leaves are light in weight and very thin, but the}' make the 
finest smokers of any leaves on the plant. It pays to save them, 
as the price of bright smokers will at all times be remunerative 
to the planter, seldom bringing less than ten cents per pound. 
These light early matured leaves are easily cured. There is little 
time and science required to yellow them: the stems are small 
and soon dry out. They make the choicest smoking tobacco 
in the world. As soon as the dark green color of the leaf 
changes to a -pale green, it is the proof that the leaf is ripe; the 
growing sap has ceased to flow to the leaf. The tobacco is 
better at this time than it will be again. It should be removed 
from the stalk at once, for a state of inactivity never takes place 
in the life of the tobacco plant. It makes and unmakes all the 
same day. destruction and progression is the order of the day, 
and have full swing at the same hour on the two extremities of 
each plant. The man who thinks to get the best results from a 
tobacco plant and uses the stalk as a handle to cure the leaves 
on, reckons without his host. These ripe leaves should be 




-HH*/ 






- 



FRONT VIEW 

MODERN TOBACCO BARN 



-D 




FIELD BASKET FOR GATHERING GREEN TOBACCO. 



taken from the stalk, laid smoothly without injury in baskets 
made for the purpose, and hauled in a wagon to the curing 
barn. We have good reasons for removing these leaves from 
the plant at this particular time. The first good reason is they 
will bring ten cents per pound ; besides the plant needs trimming 
at the bottom to let the sun in at the root, and give the crop 
a tidy look: second, if these ripe leaves are allowed to remain 
they will assume a deep yellow color; the sap will ferment, turn 
to acid and flow back to the stalk and poison the sap through 
its whole circulation ; result, red and white blotches called frog- 
eye; like pimples on the face of a person with scrofula in the 
blood. If the planter has no time to cure them it is better to 
break them off and lie on the ground. After the leaves arrive 
at the curing barn, they should be carried under the shed, as 
the sun will blacken them wherever it strikes them. The women 
and children are now called into requisition; a class of labor 
never before seen about a curing barn. In fact the Snow 
system enables a community to cultivate and safely cure twice 
the quantity of tobacco than by the old way on the stalk. Just 
here let me remind every planter that if he expects his women 
and children to be of good service to him he must make prepa- 
ration for their comfort; no woman or girl will sit and stick 
tobacco leaves on his wires with the sun shining on her head: 
they must be sheltered from sun and rain and have seats pro- 



26 

vided; and their sticks must be set firmly in frames at the right 
height so as not to get the arms out of a natural and easy 
position; this being done the planter will find his women and 
children always ready to help him with his crop, and a ten-year 
old girl the best hand on the farm at sticking tobacco.' It 
will take about four good hands in the field gathering leaves 
to fill a barn in ten hours at the first priming. Many plants 
will not yield any leaves the first time over. The next "time the 
leaves will be larger, and not so many can be put on the points 
of wire although the bam will weigh out mure tobacco at one 
curing. At sundown the barn has been filled; the nine hundred 
sticks with their ten thousand points have each about eight 
leaves on each point. About eighty thousand leaves of tobacco 
in the barn, that in every system but the Snow plan have 
always been sacrificed to a foolish, wasteful method of curing- 
tobacco. This has been of first primings, if we succeed in get- 
ting a good cure will bring the planter ten cent-, per pound, 
and will net one hundred dollars. So muc h for the product of 
the plant in June in Eastern North Carolina, South Carolina 
and Georgia. Virginia will come on later. There are doubt- 
less good reasons why the wasteful way of curing tobacco first 
came into practice, and lias been continued up to the present 
time - Tllin . v years ago tobacco signified a plug of twist called 
Cavendish or leaf suitable for its manufacture. The bottom 
leaves on the plant were light and trashy, and did not make a 
good chew; they were not wanted for any purpose as they were 
allowed to die on the plant, or primed off and left on the ground, 
and not considered as waste. When I was a boy, if men 
smoked, which they often did. they cut tobacco from a plug, 
rolled it in their hands, filled their clay pipes, lighting it with a 
coal of fire or if with a flint and steel with punk. Fashions 
have changed since then: we smoke now more tobacco than 
we chew; the cigarette has been invented. Killikanic, the first 
venture in granulated smoking tobacco, is not more than thirtv- 
five years old. Now the little bag of smoking tobacco is seen 
on all sides, which with the cigars and cheroots the whole 
country is enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke, and the best 
and most improved tobacco for smoking of any kind is found at 
the bottom of the plant; hence the demand for cutters and 
smokers, which is likely to continue and increase. For this 



reason we have rilled our barn with these bottom leaves which 
we will now proceed to cure, and pack down in such a manner 
that when they have been cured and ripened, every man in the 
habit of smoking will pronounce them the best he ever saw, 
and will not be injured by using them. Having filled the barn 
we close all doors and windows. Shut every avenue through 
which the outside air can get in or the heat in the barn get out. 
We start a small fire in each furnace. Our object is to raise 
the heat to about eighty-five degrees inside of the barn; this 
in the month of June or July and to ninety degrees in August or 
September and October. If the weather is very hot we will 
have the thermometer four or five degrees higher inside of the 
barn than it is outside. We will keep the heat about eighty-five 
or ninety degrees until the majority of the leaves in the barn 
have assumed a light pea green color; it may take thirty or thir- 
ty-six hours to accomplish this. 

We are now ripening our tobacco or curing it; in plain 
English we are getting the green or Chlorophyl out. We are 
also getting out the nitrate of potash, and what is of great con- 
sequence, we are sweating out the poison, bitter, pungent ele- 
ment, known as nicotannin. This latter element is what causes 
dizziness, and palpitation of the heart, also heart-burn, when 
excessive chewing is indulged in. The nitrates is what bites the 
tongue. We express these elements out of the leaf by heat and 
sweat, and when ready we put up our heat and open our air ducts 
and drive the fumes out through the top of the barn with a strong 
current of rarified air. In short this is the only way that tobacco 
should ever be cured. We want fancy color and high flavor as 
well. We will now proceed to give the reader the most approved 
color and tell him how to get it. Remember we are curing 
light thin tobacco easily yellowed. We have taken in from the 
held only such leaves as were showing signs of maturity. We 
picked only such leaves as are turned to a pale green. Thus 
we have a barn full of uniformly ripe tobacco, and can yellow 
it all or nearly all alike. 



28 




^ES, our task will be easy when this 
is the case. If we get ripe and 
ipe leaves in the same barn we have a 
:ult task, for this reason we want a 
careful, intelligent man in the field to guide 
and insist that only ripe leaves be gath- 
ered. After we have kept our tobacco in 
a heat about ninety degrees until the ma- 
jority of the leaves are a light pea green 
we will raise the heat to ninety-five degrees. We 
will increase the fires a good deal as we shall now 
proceed to let in a little air at the bottom, through 
our conduits, and open the ventilators at the top 
of the barn. The barn is now full of sweat, full 
of the fumes of nicotannin and nitrates, and 
we are anxious to rid the barn of a foul odor from the green 
tobacco. By raising tne heat and forcing in the air at 
the base and opening the top of the barn a strong 
current is made, and as the barn has a natural draft, being 
thirty-four feet high, there is a strong uprush of air which 
soon drives out the sweat and the fumes of the green tobacco. 
So fearful is the smell and the stench so sickening that if a dog 
were tied with his nose over o, u - of our ventilators we would 
not answer for his life fifteen minutes. The heat is kept at 
ninety-five degrees about two hours, then slowly pushed up to 
one hundred, and remain stationary three hours;' then slowly go 
up to one hundred and five, two 'hours; then one hundred' and 
eight, two hours, and then one hundred and twelve degrees, and 
stand three hours with all the air holes open except those on the 
sides near the bottom of the barn. These are not used only to 
let the heat down to cool the barn. Careful watch must now be 
had that the leaf dries clear. If the tails of the leaf curl up and 
dry bright the heat is all right. If there are signs of dark lines 
appearing there is too much heat and too much moisture in the 
barn and it would be advisable to drop back to one hundred 
and five degrees one hour; then slowly move the heat up to 
one hundred and twelve, and then raise one degree an hour until 
one hundred and twenty degrees are reached; stand at one hun- 
dred and twenty until the leaf is cured; then advance the heat 




INTERIOR VIEW 
MODERN TOBACCO BARN 



29 

slowly about two degrees an hour to one hundred and forty, 
and cure the stems hard, when every stem in the barn will snap 
like glass draw your fires, open all the doors and windows and 
ventilators; sprinkle the basement floor with water, and let the 
barn stand open one night. The tobacco will be ready to take 
out of the barn in twenty-four hours. We have now cured 
about one thousand pounds of July primings, or June in Geor- 
gia. These are mostly smokers. The next day they are read) 
to take from the barn and carry to the packing house. The 
same baskets are in use for emptying the barn that were used 
in rilling it. The racks are let down; the sticks are taken from 
the racks, and set in a frame where the leaves are rapidly taken 
from the wires, and the sticks put back where they were taken 
from. Before the tobacco is removed from the wires it is of 
the highest importance that the leaf is in the right condition 
to handle. If too dry it will be broken and only fit for scrap or 
granulation; if too soft and limber it will heat and get mouldy 
in bulk and be likely to come out an orange instead of a lemon 
color, which is so much prized. This lemon color is easier 
got than kept; if tobacco is bulked while in too high case it 
is sure to go. If once gone it never returns. It is of no partic- 
ular value; as an orange red on a filler is not thought to be 
detrimental to the chew; but it is fancy; and it is the color in 
cutters and wrappers that brings the prices. All trades have 
fancies, and the tobacco trade is as full of them as any trade 
known and it pays the farmer to cater to them. At this point the 
fanner must put his best man on guard. When the leaf is 
in a condition that it can be clasped in the hand at the middle 
and lightly squeezed without cracking the fibres but little, and 
the stem is hard and brittle, the tobacco will keep if closely 
packed with the stems outward. In this condition the bulk 
should be made on the floor of the packing house in a long row, 
with the tips of the leaves lapping each other, and the stems out- 
ward like bunching shingles. The bulks will soon settle together, 
and will go through a mild sweat which is beneficial ; necessarily 
resulting in great good as we shall show further on. Let the 
bulks be covered with blankets or tarpaulins to keep the moisture 
in, and the top from bleaching, or going and coming with the 
changes in the weather. The bulks will require watching for the 
first ten davs to see that thev do not 2fet undulv warm ; if so they 



3Q 



may be rebulked or aired in the warm spots. The second curing- 
will be on now in about eight days, and will be of the cutter type. 
The leaves will be larger, more uniform in size and better color, 
and bring nearly double the price per pound. Care should be 
taken now to get only ripe leaves; get only the leaves that show 
a pale green color. If leaves are a clear yellow color in the field 
break them off and leave them on the ground. The oil that was 
in the leaf is there no longer. The acid caused by the fermenta- 
tion of the sap has destroyed the virtue of the leaf, only its bad 
or pungent elements are left. It has no weight or virtue as 
tobacco, and time and space are wasted in handling them. 
The curing process is practically the same as with the first cure; 
save this, the planter is working on a barn of tobacco if rightly 
handled will produce him two hundred dollars instead of one 
hundred, and should have his best attention from the beginning 
to the end. 

'T is just here we wish to impress the 
reader with the fact that absolutely 
good sweet tobacco, free from the 
bitter, biting elements cannot be 
cured outside of a structure or barn 
that is wanting in capacity to retain 
the moisture until the tannin and ni- 
nes are thoroughly sweated out of 
the leaf, while in the green state. 
The barn must also have the capac- 
ity to expel these objectionable ele- 
ments out of the building, as fast as 
liberated, by a strong current of air 
which the building must be able to 
manufacture at the will of the curer. 

This is where the Modern Barn excels all others, and tobacco 
absolutely perfect, cannot be cured outside of it, or some struct- 
ure having its abilities. 

The plants in the field have now had an average of four 
leaves taken from the bottoms; the sun has full action on the 
roots. The hoe should keep the weeds down; and July is the 
time to watch the young Hawk moths; they are now full in the 
breeding season, and in a few days will be ready for business. 
This is the farmer's time. Seeing no eggs on his plant is no 




3i 

sign of security. It gives him no surety that he will escape 
them. If he has kept his Jimpson blossoms poisoned he is all 
right; if he has not he may be all wrong. The suckers must 
be watched and kept pinched off, or the crop will not weigh out 
twelve hundred pounds per acre. This second barn will be cut- 
ters; the first was smokers. If they are packed separate, the 
planter will find his crop practically graded. There will be 
three or four more curings on these same plants; in Georgia, 
perhaps more, if the sucker crop comes in well. The third cur- 
ing will be a mixed barn of cutters and wrappers, and should be 
about fourteen hundred pounds in weight, and be worth about 
two hundred and fifty dollars. The curing will require about 
twenty hours more time; the stems are larger, the leaf heavier, 
and the heat must be run a little slower, as there is more sugar 
in the leaf. If a light yellow is obtained, the yellowing pro- 
cess will require more time. 



32 



CHAPTER X. 

CURING FILLERS MAHOGANY. 

We have one more barn of tobacco to cure; if it is the last 
it is by no means the least. It is the part of the crop that 
largely gives character to the whole crop. It is the filler for 
plug or chewing tobacco; the tip leaves in the stalk cure sys- 
tem. I liese are in great part harvested green; the exigencies 
often arising as the curing season compels this. Will my crop 
lose more al the bottom than it will gain at the top. if 1 let it 
stand another week is the burning question with the stalk curers 
as the season conies near at hand. Will there be frost is another 
question which hurries the late planting into the curing barn. 
These are cut and carried to the curing barn on the stalk 
where the curer lias to wrestle with, the problem ol" curing ripe 
leaves, over-ripe leaves and green leaves all in the same barn, 
and the same heat. This is as difficult as it would he for a man 
to ride two horses at the same time; one of which wanted to 
strike a two-forty gait and the other a four-twenty gait, the rider 
is in a strained condition, and is likely to end his journey on 
foot. This condition is the prime cause of the two hundred 
millions pounds of tobacco denominated nondescript, trash is 
the proper term. With the Snow system, we let these tip leaves 
get their full growth and get fully ripe before we gather them: 
they have the full power of the stalk to feed them. They get 
very rich in a short time. Like a sow with ten pigs, if five are 
weaned, the < ther five get more milk. If the rains are abundant 
the) will keep green after the}- are fully ripe. The planter can 
always know when they are fully ripe by the grain on the leaf, 
and by the absence of the clammy hairs which are always seen 
on an unripe tobacco leaf. If there is no danger of frost nor 
signs of little red spots on the face of the leaf, it is not best to 
hurry the curing; but if the red spots have appeared, it is a sure 
sign of decay, and the curing should commence at once. Fully 
ripe tobacco is our motto, with as much fat in the leaf as pos- 
sible. We are now working for some choice filler, and expect 



33 

our barn will weigh out two thousand pounds at least. If they 
are not turning yellow on the hill we will know that they are 
nevertheless rich in oil of tobacco. It will take us longer to 
cure them, but we will be well paid for our time. When we are 
ready to cure, we will crowd our barn full of these green leaves, 
and put in one fire to warm the barn to 90 degrees. Let it hang 
two days. Afterwards, we will keep the heat on about thirty- 
six hours at ninety degrees, and gradually raise the heat about 
one degree an hour with the conduits and ventilators open until 
we have reached one hundred and thirty-five degrees and stand 
there until the leaf is cured, and the stems still soft and not 
cured. Now draw the fires and let the barn stand closed up tight 
top and bottom,, and let it remain three or four days; the sap in 
the stem will run back into the leaf. Then rekindle the fires with 
the ventilators open, and start the heat slowly about one degree 
an hour until one hundred and thirty-five degree.- are again 
reached; and remain there until the stems are all cured dry. 
The first stage of curing is finished. The second stage will be- 
gin just where the first left off. If the color is green on the 
leaf when the curing is finished have no fears. »We have only 
commenced the curing of this class of tobacco. After the to- 
bacco has come in case, with the feather of the leaf soft and the 
stem hard, we will remove the leaf from the barn, and bulk it 
in a close compact body, and cover it up close with blankets 
and not disturb it until the following May or June, when we 
will market some of the richest mahogany fillers and wrappers 
ever seen on any market, and never fail. The heat in the curing 
barn must never be allowed higher than one hundred and forty 
degrees. This leaves the vegetable albumen in perfect condi- 
tion, and the ripening process is carried on in the bulk. The 
excess of sugar in the leaf prevents the bright lemon color in 
the curing barn; but in the bulk this saccharine matter forms 
itself into small polka dots and the spotted mahogany leaf so 
much prized by the manufacturer of choice chewing stock is 
the unvarying result. In Georgia, and sections with long sea- 
sons, a sucker or two can be turned out and some choice 
smokers can be grown that will materially add to the value of 
the crop. These mahogany fillers and wrappers have been lying 
in bulk from the day they were cured; they were packed down 
in the month of September when the weather was warm ; they 



34 

went through a sweat while lying in bulk; this sweat was a 
species of fermentation; a condition necessary for tobacco to 
pass through before it is safe to either put in hogsheads, or to 
manufacture and put in boxes. 

If the heat is run above 140 degrees, on rich waxy leaves 
and they are bulked in a moist condition they are inclined to 
stick together, but if cured so as it leaves the wax in the cells 
capped over, and not cooked out, the bulk will remain for years 
without sticking together or other injury. 

It is now safe to pass through the month of May. The May 
sweat comes to it in proper form and all fullness in the month 
of I 'ctober. If the color had been right, it would have been 
ready and perfectly safe to have worked it into plug in the 
winter, January following the cure. We cured it slow, and at 
a low temperature in order to retain all the albuminoids and 
essential oils in their most perfect condition. These must not 
be cooked or hardened by excessive heat. The oils of tobacco 
will preserve the leaf and the manufactured goods better than 
any substitute; nothing can ever take and fill its place. The 
attempt is often made to find some commodity to replace the 
virtue that the stalk cure process, with two hundred degrees of 
heat lias taken from the leaf: but up to date they stop at the rao- 
lasses barrel. By the curing and fermenting in bulk the large, 
costly prize houses are not needed. They are worse than use- 
less, as tobacco remains crude and unfermented until it is taken 
down: and while it hangs in the open air is so much time lost. 



CHAPTER XL 



BULKING AFTER CURING. 



To the manufacturer of plug or smoking tobacco or cigars 
the proper and immediate bulking and fermenting is of the 
highest importance, as it puts the manufacturer in possession 
of seasoned fermented goods one year ahead of the usual time; 
and being cured separate from the stalk the leaf possesses a 
flavor that cannot be had from stalk cured leaf. 




STOVE. 



MODERN TOBACCO BARN. 



Two planters may grow tobacco in the same field, of the 
same variety and practically the same method of cultivation ; one 
man will sell at fifty cents per pound and the other at five cents 
per pound; the sale perhaps on the same floor and to the same 
parties the same day. This difference is to be seen daily on every 
loose leaf market in the country. 

This difference in value is caused mainly in the time and 
manner of curing. How important then that the planter under- 
stands his business when he comes to gather his crop. If the 
planter cuts his crop and cures it on the stalk he hazards every- 
thing on a single throw of the die; he has but one chance at the 



36 

cure; his leaves in every stage of maturity are cured in the same 
barn and in the same heat. If his crop has been overtaken with 
a severe drought late in the season the bottom leaves have 
ripened early and the crop is composed largely of trash lugs and 
half grown green tips. If the season is wet the large sappy 
stalk takes virtue from the leaf, and poor color and a leaf void of 
virtue is the rule and little money for the product. There is no 
escaping these results with the stalk curing plan; they are the 
inevitable results of the faulty method and will continue so long 
as it is practiced. With tobacco growers a lack of knowledge 
is a very expensive situation, over-ripe trash lugs, and under- 
ripe green tips are not the legitimate product of the plant. They 
are the price men pay for not knowing how, wlien they embark 
in the industry. This mass of nondescript aggregates more than 
one third of our annual crop. It is the fearful price men are 
paying for their reverence for the customs of their daddies. 
Prejudice is strong in the human mind; we are actuated by it 
when we little think. It is a kind of knowledge men obtain with- 
out effort; no time is lost in getting it, hence its abundance. 
Two hundred million pounds of cheap trash lugs and green tips 
is the price the planters annually pay for their reverence for the 
old custom of curing on the stalk. A traveler passing a field saw 
a man plowing heavy land with a diminutive jackass. He ad- 
vised the plowman to trade his jack for a horse that would plow 
his land deeper and taster. To this suggestion the plowman 
replied that ''his father did his plowing that way, and a jackass 
was good enough for him." The loss in weight and value of the 
crop by wmng methods of curing is simply enormous. The 
test made by the North Carolina experiment station during the 
season of ninety-one at Oxford, North Carolina, settles the ques- 
tion fully. While it made no new discover}', it was the first 
authoritative statement of the facts, and brought to notice a sub- 
ject of great moment; very much to the surprise of the planting 
industry, and in fact to the world of tobacco. They were not 
prepared to believe that a wrong method of curing was des- 
tructive of 40 per cent, of the actual value of every acre of to- 
bacco they grow: yet this is the fact revealed; and no possible 
amount of explanation can make a better showing for the waste- 
ful way now in practice. Below we give the report of the 
officials of the North Carolina experiment station made in Jan- 
uary, ninetv-two. 




'"'■ A ... , • ■M-^.i^^A vs 



REAR VIEW 

MODERN TOBACCO BARM 



37 



CHAPTER XII. 



EXPERIMENTS SHOWING THE COMPARATIVE VALUE OF CURING 

TOBACCO UPON THE STALK, AND THE SNOW 

WIRE LEAF CURE. 

The comparative test instituted near Oxford, N. C, to show 
the relative value between the common method of curing to- 
bacco upon the stalk, and the new Snow method of curing the 
leaf as it ripens has been completed by the North Carolina Agri- 
cultural Experiment Station. The following final results are 
given as matters of interest in advance of their publication in the 
Station bulletin, where the detailed progress of the test, and the 
methods adopted to insure accuracy will be found. One acre of 
growing tobacco was carefully measured off in a field where the 
plants were as identical as possible in size and hardiness. One- 
half of the acre was cured by the Snow process, and the other 
half by the common method of stalk curing. Absolute impar- 
tiality was observed, strictest precautions were taken to prevent 
any one or anything influencing the result of their cure. The 
tobacco was graded by an experienced grader, and five experts 
valued the piles as they lay on the floor (independently of each 
other) without any knowledge of the origin of each pile. The 
values were obtained by multiplying the weight of each pile by 
the average of the five values placed upon it. Subsequent sale on 
the floor of the Farmer's Alliances warehouse in Oxford con- 
firmed very closely the correctness of their averages. The 
weights and values are as follows: 

For the half acre the common stalk cure method gave 326 
lbs., valued at $38.30. an average of $11.74 per hundred pounds. 
For the other half acre, the Snow wire cure method gave 454 
pounds valued at $63.14, an average of $13.96 per hundred 
pounds. The cost of labor and the method must be deducted 
from these figures. The results will then be for the stalk cure 
total value at $36.22; and for the Snow wire cure total value 
$57.96, a difference in favor of the Snow wire cure of $20.75 Per 
half acre, or $41.50 per one acre. 



38 

The experiment was made in the interest of agriculture solely. 
If the existing method of curing tobacco can be improved, and 
a better one substituted our tobacco growers should know it. It 
is assuredly the duty of the experiment station to ascertain this 
fact, and it became known. — H. B. Battle, Director, Experi- 
ment Station, Raleigh, N. C. 

Let the planter take one hundred pounds of good rich tobacco 
leaves cured in a heat no greater than one hundred and forty 
degrees; weigh carefully and cover close in a box where the air 
cannot penetrate the bulk; at the end of four months, if taken 
up and weighed, it will show a gain of five pounds. If the same 
amount of good tobacco cured on the stalk at about one hundred 
and eighty degrees; stripped and weighed and hung up in a prize 
house in the ordinary way; if weighed at the end of four months 
will show a loss of ten pounds. Just here is to be found a dis- 
tinction very destructive to profits in manufacture. The differ- 
ence between hanging and bulking is exactly fifteen pounds in 
one hundred pounds of tobacco. We now call attention to the 
short sketch given below which makes interesting reading when 
a man is looking for facts: 

We, G. T. Walker, of the county of Rockingham and State 
of North Carolina, and T. C. Blalock, of Greenville county and 
State of North Carolina, hereby certify that on the nineteenth 
day of September, 1891, did cut thirty plants of tobacco to make 
an honest test, which is the better way of curing tobaccD on the 
Snow process or the old process. 

We cut plants of uniform size and plucked just half the leaves 
alternatively, and the difference in the weight was just four 
ounces. There were two hundred and fifty-eight leaves on the 
thirty plants, one hundred and twenty-nine were cured by the 
Snow process, and weighed three pounds and fourteen and one- 
half ounces; and one hundred and twenty-nine were cured on 
the stalk, and weighed three pounds, ten and one-half ounces, 
September 24, 1891. 

G. T. WALKER, 
T. L. BLALOCK. 

Sworn and subscribed before me this 24th day of September, 
1 891, at Oxford, Granville county, North Carolina, 

S. V. ELLIS, 
Justice of the Peace. 



39 

Mr. G. T. Walker is a prominent farmer in Rockingham 
county; and Mr. Blalock is assistant to Dr. Battle in the State 
Agricultural Experiment Station. 

The curing was done in the Snow barn, the tobacco hanging 
side by side in the same heat. For further proof in the same 
direction read Mr. W. O. Jackson's test which shows how little 
excuse the farmers have for the belief that is so prevalent among 
them that the stalk feeds the leaf during the curing process ; when 
the fact remains without contradiction that the leaf is spoiled or 
robbed of its virtue ; its essential oils equal to six pounds to every 
one hundred pounds cured on the stalk. 

Mr. W. O. Jackson's testimony is given below: 

Culler, Stokes County, N. C, January 8. 
Mr. W. H. Snow, 

My brother handed me a letter from you, of which I find you 
have been misinformed. It was I that made the test in curing 
leaves of tobacco on wires and on the stalk last fall. I selected 
well matured plants of even number of leaves. I took off half 
of the leaves on a stalk — sometimes taking off the south side 
of the stalk, and sometimes taking off the north side — when I 
would take the top leaf; next time would leave top leaf on stalk; 
with its half number of leaves put on split stick; put the leaves 
on 4V2 Snow's Wire Stick; cured them in log barn in same tier, 
side by side. First test pulled off and weighed. Leaves cured 
on wires being 54 in number, weighed over one-fourth pound 
more than same number cured on stalk. The leaves cured on 
the stalk appeared (next to the stalk) dead and papery, and of a 
dark or bluish color, which warehousemen and tobacco dealers 
pronounce unripe tobacco, while those cured on wires are not 
so, but appear more lively and the color good to end of the stem. 

Yours truly, 
W. O. JACKSON. 

If this six pounds in one hundred be added to the fifteen 
pounds as the difference between hanging up or bulking down, 
it will show twenty-one pounds of very much better tobacco. 
This, in itself, is a profit greater than most men are making on 
their manufactured goods; these are cold facts which plug men 
will do well to examine. 



40 

We captured this nugget in Philosophy six years ago, in 1886, 
with a pair of grocers" scales; and have been proclaiming it while 
the numerous experiment stations with their costly laboratories 
and numerous aids were hesitating and looking wise. They do 
not like to admit a stubborn fact of so much importance. They 
have been stumbling headlong over the truth during the last 
thirty years and have not been able to locate it. This experi- 
ment was made with the most confident expectation that the 
stalk cure end of this acre of tobacco would be the heaviest; the 
advice of the old farmers was freely given ; the result was the 
cause of great chagrin. The loss of forty-one dollars and fifty 
cents on each acre of tobacco planted in the stalks comes nearly 
up to the price obtained per acre as shown by the eleventh 
census; namely fifty-one dollars and twenty-five cents per acre, 
eight dollars and seventy-five cents short of one hundred per 
cent, during the last ten years. 

These figures show a very urgent demand for a change in the 
method of handling the crop. This change is likely to take 
place slowly but surely. As the location changes the method 
of curing will change; the center of the tobacco industry will 
change likewise. Tobacco growing is no longer as remunerative 
as formerly, either in Virginia or North Carolina. The reasons 
are obvious. Tobacco is more generally grown over a greater 
portion of the country; the Virginia and North Carolina soil has 
had the tobacco taken out of it; their facilities for producing a 
good crop are growing less every year; their methods of culti- 
vation and curing are out of date and not in touch with the 
times. New men, new soil, and new and improved methods will 
gradually crowd the old planters out. The masses who use 
tobacco will demand and obtain a more wholesome and pleasanter 
tobacco. They will obtain it from the new territories with the 
new ideas. The trend of tobacco is not westward or northward, 
but surely southward; where a longer season and more sunshine 
can be had, and more pounds per acre of milder, sweeter tobacco 
of every description and for all purposes can be obtained. The 
wasteful, barbarous method of cure will not follow the planting 
to the south to any extent. Some will come from Virginia and 
bring their notions with them; but they will soon find their bitter 
tobacco is not wanted; there will be shown them a better way. 



4i 



CHAPTER XIII. 

BAD EFFECTS OF CURING ON THE STALK. 

The same variety from the same field, cured the same day has 
a marked difference both in taste and smell. There is not the 
pungent bitterness, found in all new cured tobacco, when cured 
on the stalk. This biting element is so pronounced that tobacco 
is considered unfit for use until two years old. Time must be 
given the leaf to discharge and neutralize the poison contained 
in the nitrates and nicotannin which it takes up in some form 
from the stalk, before it is fit for use. These elements must be 
mellowed; a chemical change must take place; hence about two 
years time is taken to get rid of what the stalk is foolishly allowed 
to put in. An element not belonging to the leaf, but to the stalk 
only, and in every way highly objectionable. This is one of the 
strong reasons why we remove our leaves from the stalk before 
curing. It is to the thorough sweating of the leaf in the green 
state that we attribute the excellence of the tobacco cured in the 
Snow barn. It is not enough that it is cured separate from the 
stalk. It must be thoroughly sweated while in the green state. 
The Snow barn is built with this object strongly in view. The 
old log barn has not this important requisite; neither has it the 
power under all circumstances to relieve itself of a sweat, if by 
any chance it gets one. Just what the chemical action is on the 
leaf that takes place at this sweating period is questionable; the 
result is what we are now dealing with. At the time this sweat- 
ing is taking place the barn is filled with offensive odors which 
the heat seems to express from the leaves. The process of ex- 
pelling these odors continues so long as there is any sweat or 
sap in either leaf or stem. The air in the room is completely 
changed every five minutes during three days with the heat 
about one hundred and thirty degrees average. It is plain to 
see how we get sweet, wholesome tobacco, freer from all offen- 
sive properties than can be obtained from any other known way. 
The sweating has another good effect on the leaf. It has a 
strong tendency to strengthen the fibre in wrapper leaves for 



42 

plug and cigars. This is a great advantage. It has also a 
marked tendency to contract the stems and fibres as they appear 
less prominent in the leaf so cured than in leaf cured on the 
stalk in the open barn. It is a fact well established that a com- 
mon hogshead will hold two hundred pounds more leaf under 
the same pressure of wire cure than stalk cure; this owing solely 
to the difference in the size of the stems and fibres, and to the 
fact that the pores of the wire stem are filled with wax solid; 
while the stem of the stalk cured leaf is porous like dry honey- 
comb. Another proof of our theory that the leaf is robbed of 
its weight while curing if attached to the stalk. This drainage 
of virtue is greater by the slow process by air cure than when 
rapidly cured by artificial heat. 

If the loss of money was the only evil it might be tolerated; 
but unfortunately the greater evil is yet to come. This mass of 
stuff is all used in some form by the devotees of the weed; not 
in its normal state, but doctored with every conceivable nos- 
trum; the unripe pungent flavor of the green tip leaves must be 
disguised. The leaf was harvested while the albumen was in the 
matrix. Instead of the essential oils we have an acid with a 
biting flavor without a name. The wax cells that were to con- 
tain the Empyrean oil was in the embryo. All these requisites 
of perfect tobacco would have been there in perfect form if they 
had been allowed time; but the exigencies of the case demanded 
immediate action. The bottom of the plant was in a worse 
condition, if possible, than the top. The bottom was rotting. 
What else to do but cut the plant and save a part of the leaves 
right, and do the best we can with the rest? 

The over ripe stuff is little else than leaf fibre; the oil has been 
there, every requisite of perfect tobacco has been there; but alas 
the laggard husbandman was not there. The oil of tobacco 
has gone back into the soil by capillary action, leaving the dry 
bones of the leaf without substance or value; a sort of sponge 
to absorb and hold any substitute the manipulator sees fit to 
add; the names of which are legion. 

To the poison inherent in this mass of unripe tobacco and its 
concomitants, can be traced the unpleasant odor of the bad 
cigar; the bad taste in the mouth after smoking either pipe or 
cigar; the dizziness in the head, and weakening of the eye- 
sight; frequent heart-burn, palpitation of the heart and kindred 




INTERIOR OF BASEMENT 

MODERN TOBACCO BARN 



43 



ailments. Good ripe, well cured tobacco, unless used to excess, 
will not produce the evils here named. The drying of the leaf 
on the stalk is harmful in many ways; the real virtue of the 
leaf is extracted; the body draws sustenance from the extremi- 
ties at the time of dissolution; and the vicious elements of the 
poison, filthy stalk are imparted to the leaf by the volatile ex- 
halations from the stalk. This is apparent in the marked dif- 
ference well known to exist in every case where the leaf is cured 
off the stalk when contrasted with the leaf cured on the stalk. 

We have up to this time cured four or five barns of tobacco, 
taking from each plant as many leaves as we found in the right 
condition to cure each time we filled our barn. ( )ur primings, 
our cutters and wrappers have been cured and are safely housed, 
and are going through the second stage of curing so important 
to the manufacturer, and the man who expects to receive pleas- 
ure by either smoking or chewing the product. 




THE CELEBRATED CHAMPION WAREHOUSE BASKET. 



GRADING FOR MARKET. 



The grading of tobacco for market is very important and not 
easily learned ; it is said that " each buyer pays for the bulk by 



44 

judging of the poorest leaf in the pile," if this is the case, it is 
very important that it be properly graded, so that the good rich 
and sound leaves should be bulked together, and the poor leaves 
in another pile separate. 

A leaf with good color, size, and rich, with two or three worm 
holes in it is classed as a filler, and the price varies from 6 and 8 
cents to 75 cents. 

The large light bright leaf is a cutter, while a leaf of the same 
general appearance, if heavy, or good body, goes as a first class 
wrapper, the difference in price is as 20 to 60. The length of 
the leaves must be looked to as long leaf only goes into first 
grade wrappers. The leaves of good texture and thickness, but 
short, should go by themselves, as second grade wrappers, and 
sell for about one-half the price of long wrappers. 

Smokers and cutters should have the same care in sorting as 
the wrappers, and should be tied into bundles of about ten 
leaves, with the stems nicely rolled and covered with a good 
tough leaf. 

Grading is an art that pays the planter to study and is only 
learned by watching an expert, it cannot be handled when dry, 
and the ''just right" condition when put on the market is often 
of the highest importance to the grower. 

The small and broken leaves are graded as bright or dark 
smokers — if light — but if rich and waxy, are classed as fillers, 
and the two grades embrace fully one-half of the crop. 



45 



CHAPTER XIV 



CIGAR LEAF. 




"LITTLE DUTCH. 



It is believed that tobacco can 

be grown with a good degree of 

success in a greater range of 

latitude than any crop of any 

% commercial value; but when we 

if get the best results from the 
.? ° 

% Virginia plug stock, we doubt the 
propriety of planting it farther 
north than the thirty-sixth par- 
allel. 

It is a plant that requires sunshine, and if the plant does its 
best under the best condition, it must have immunity from frost 
at least six months in the growing. The plant thrives well in 
sections north of thirty-six degrees, but it must be pruned to 
suit the season. The best results are not obtained in the culti- 
vation. The average per acre in Virginia falls below six hundred 
pounds; while twelve hundred pounds is as easily grown in South 
Carolina and Georgia, where the season is longer, and the right 
method of cure is adopted. It is plain to see that the cultivation 
of tobacco will gradually move in the direction where the best 
results can be obtained. Ten years will see South Carolina and 
Georgia the center of the tobacco growing district of the United 
States. With the change in the location will come the change 
in the method of cultivation and curing. Our foreign trade will 
be greatly increased by reason of having a superior tobacco to sell, 
which will come with change of climate and manner of growing 
and curing. Let Georgia and South Carolina take hold of their 
opportunity; no fear for the result. If failure will come, it will 
come through your own action or lack of faith. Don't think 
you can succeed by adopting the Virginia methods of either cul- 
tivating or curing. The Virginian did the best he could with 
his system and climate. You have a better climate; but with 
the Virginia system it is of no use to you. The tobacco plant 



46 

will bring all its propensities and peculiarities when it is trans- 
ferred to South Carolina and Georgia. It will grow green leaves 
on the top of the plant, and at the same time ripen them at the 
bottom, and if the planter is not prepared to cure them when 
they get ripe he will miss curing them at all; and will also miss 
the sale of about one-half of the legitimate product of his crop; 
he will also lose the part of his crop that is soon to be as highly 
prized as any part of it; namely the light bright, mild smokers, 
than which no part of the crop will be more sought for, when 
the trades and people learn their value. 

We have said in a former chapter that we believed in ten years 
the center of the tobacco industry would be near Columbia, 
South Carolina. The bulk of the cigar leaf will be grown in 
South Georgia and Florida. The same reasons hold good with 
cigar leaf as with Virginia leaf. The seasons are long and the 
plant has ample time to mature its entire product from bottom 
to top; this it cannot do in shorter and colder seasons; besides 
the power of the sun is exerted to little purpose on the plant 
during a season too short to produce a rich leaf from bottom 
to top of the plants. The island of Cuba has long and easily 
held the honor of producing the best cigar in the world; no part 
of the world questions her supremacy. The same variety planted 
in Pennsylvania does not come up to the native Cuban leaf. And 
yet her soil is no better than that of Florida, South Georgia or 
Louisiana. It is her length of season, her long hours of tropical 
sunshine that gives to her tobacco its unrivalled excellence. 
Florida, while not quite so far south has all the benefits of sea 
air and a humid atmosphere, which some claim as the prime 
cause of the superiority of Cuban tobacco. The average per 
acre will be much greater if the leaf cure is adopted. It is safe 
to assume that Florida, South Georgia and Louisiana will grow 
cigar leaf as good as can be grown in the world If their climate 
is lacking a little in producing a perfect cigar leaf, the deficiency 
can be more than supplied with the right method of curing. We 
have no hesitancy in saying that Havana seed leaf grown in 
Georgia and cured in the Snow barn will make a cigar that will 
satisfy more men than Cuban leaf cured as it is in the air in 
Cuba. A pleasant flavor, a toughness of fibre, an oily glossy 
appearance to the wrapper is uniformly obtained when the leaf has 
been plucked from the stalk and thoroughly sweated in the green 



47 

state, the bitter element driven out of it. This method of cure 
would greatly add to the good qualities of Cuba's best leaf if the 
whole crop was harvested when ripe. The trash lugs that have 
been allowed to remain on the plant until they are over-ripe, 
have lost the essential oils; the virtue of the leaf has gone to the 
ground by capillary action, the fibre of the leaf is left, and with 
it a bitter residue of the albumen. The leaf is harvested and used 
as a filler for cigars; an unsavory' cigar is the result. The smoke 
is as blue and as hard on the eye and mouth as smoke from burn- 
ing wood, and the cigar has a very short life, and is soon burned 
out. 

If the plant is cut with green tips there are more fillers; this 
time not over-ripe, but unripe. We always know cigars made 
of this kind of filler; it takes longer to smoke them and all day 
to get the bad taste out of your mouth. This kind of cigar fur- 
nishes the long stubs thrown into the spittoons and gutters, and 
causes a man to swear off on cigars, and buy a pipe which he 
smokes as long as the bad taste from the cigar remains in his 
mouth. 

The bane of the industry is the millions of pounds of nonde- 
script trash, over-ripe lugs, and under-ripe top leaves; stuff that 
crowds every market; it goes to swell the stock always on hand in 
the market reports, grown and handled at a loss. It costs about 
eight cents to grow and handle it, and it sells at about four cents 
average. This stuff will largely disappear with the leaf cure. 
The mystery is solved as soon as the planter gathers his ripe 
leaves only and cures them. This waste cannot be avoided; it 
is a condition inseparable from the present process of curing on 
the stalk. No amount of science or attention can secure a crop 
without these dead and green leaves at top and bottom of each 
plant. No man ever saw a plant of tobacco with all the leaves 
on it equally ripe. This is true of cigar leaf, and true of Virginia 
leaf, no matter how or where grown. There is a disposition to 
utilize all the leaves grown, and as only about one-third of the 
legitimate product of each plant is in a ripe state at the same 
time it is easy to see where all the bad cigars come from. The 
over-ripe leaf has lost its oil, its aroma is not on hand. The 
smoker gets no pleasure for his money when he buys this kind 
of cigar; but when the leaf cure is adopted, the whole crop is 
harvested leaf by leaf as fast as they ripen. No over-ripe leaves, 



48 

no green leaves, no pole burn on the best wrapper leaves, no 
stripping in midwinter. While others are handling their crop 
the man with the Snow barn is handling his money, full value 
for every leaf grown in his fields, and quick returns. His crop 
was harvested in the best condition, and cured in its best form 
to make high grade cigars from each leaf. Xo process of har- 
vesting tobacco is ever likely to do more than this. 

The method of curing the cigar leaf is simple and inexpensive, 
the seal-skin brown color is given to the leaf in about five days 
from the field, a light brick color or a dark brick color, or any 
shade of brown or red the curer chooses, it is easier to get the 
brown cigar color and keep it, than to get and keep the lemon 
yellow. When the curing is done the crop is safe and absolutely 
in the curer's keeping, he has no fear of pole burn, nor is he 
stripping his tobacco in midwinter. The crop is placed in bulk, 
direct from the curing barn, where it is allowed to ripen the 
albumen and mellows the nitrates, and in ninety days from the 
field the whole crop is in the hands of the cigar manufacturer 
when good cigars can be made from every leaf grown in the 
field, as none but just ripe leaves went into the curing- barn. 



49 



CHAPTER XV. 

WHITE VEIN. 

There is the white vein in cigar leaf which sadly puzzles the 
leaf dealer, and detracts from the profits of the man who grows 
the crop. The remedy is easy, and the cure as certain as that 
sunset will follow sunrise. Stop drying your leaves on the stalk, 
and instead of the oil being extracted from the veins, it will re- 
main in them, and give the fibres a dark color, and the leaf more 
weight, and the cigar a much higher flavor, as the oil is the 
foundation of all these essentials. It is plain to see the import- 
ance of this element; don't waste it; it leads the manufacturer into 
all kinds of difficulties, and it means a lot of poor cigars where 
there might be good ones from the same crop. When a tobacco 
plant has been severed from its roots and hung up to dry the 
first sign of trouble is seen at the tip of the topmost leaf. The 
point begins to wilt in a warm day in less than ten minutes after 
the cutting. At the moment of cutting, the roots of the plant 
were actively pumping sap to these top leaves through the sap 
passages or pores of the stalk which at once feel the loss of this 
life-giving force. A reaction immediately takes place. The 
stalk being the largest and strongest part of the plant imme- 
diately commences to draw sustenance from the weaker parts 
or its extremities. "The points of the leaves wilt, the extremities 
get lifeless"; this is true and perfectly natural in both animal and 
vegetable life. The wilting of the leaf is not caused so much 
by evaporation of the sap through the pores of the leaf as by 
the absorption of the sap from the leaf to the stalk. This ab- 
sorption takes place through the stem and veins of the leaf. 
When the stalks are large this drainage is correspondingly so; 
and during the slow process of drying out the stalks and stems 
in the tobacco sheds these veins and fibres are left with little sub- 
stance in the shape of oil of tobacco in them. The}- are sucked 
dry; they become wood}- and hard, and as the only substance 
that can give them any color is taken from them they become 
white, and when they are subjected to the sweating process the 



5o 

oil which is in the feather of the leaf cannot penetrate them, so 
they remain white. Such leaf will do for fillers and binders, but 
look bad on the outside of a cigar. Variety and soil have some- 
thing to do with the size and woody texture of these veins, but 
the chief cause is the wrong method of curing. The only ele- 
ment that can keep these veins soft and give them a dark- 
color is extracted from them by a method of curing that has 
nothing to recommend it but its age. Let not the planter think 
there is anything new or strange in this philosophy; it is as old 
as the hills and like the statute- of IVledes and Persians, they 
alter not. Every blade of grass, every stalk of corn, every plant 
of tobacco, even- herb with its root in the soil, every man or 
animal or creeping thing on the face of the earth is amenable 
to the hxed law, that the body draws sustenance from its extremi- 
ties at the time of dissolution. When the tobacco industry shall lay 
hold of this sell-evident truth they will be well rid of an incubus 
that now hangs like a mill-stone about their necks. Six pounds 
of the oil will be added to ever) one hundred pounds grown: 
the trash will disappear entirely from the crop. Its presence is 
a condition and not a necessity; the white vein will disappear 
when the curing is done right. The bitter unsavory cigar will 
he displaced with a good cigar at the same price now charged 
lor the poor one. The crop may be grown right, the curing is 
like tlie cooking of the wheat crop or corn or potato crop, if the 
cooks do not understand their business, then sodden cakes are 
the result for the table. It is of quite as much importance to the 
crop to cure it as to grow it. All tobacco leaves when well 
ripened in the field are great!) improved in flavor by being sub- 
jected to a heat that will divest the gluten or albuminoids of the 
leaf of a raw green flavor that is peculiar to air cured tobacco 
and constitutes the chief objection to air curt or sun cure chew- 
ing tobacco. 

If von would have the best cigar possible to obtain, strip the 
leaves from the growing plant when they are ripe in their best 
possible condition and cure them in three or four days artificial 
heat, instead of two or three months by cold air doing. This 
has the same effect on a leaf of tobacco as the artificial and rapid 
evaporation has on fruit. The flavor of the fruit is caught and 
held in it. The heat closes and seals up the pores; the virtue is 
all retained, while the process of drying by air allows the flavor 



51 

to escape. The glucose or diastase is not retained in its best form ; 
it escapes through the pores of the fruit during a long slow pro- 
cess of drying, which is prevented if the heat is applied at once 
sufficient to arrest the evaporation of the virtue and let only the 
water escape. This is the reason that the evaporated fruit sells 
at twelve and one-half cents per pound when air dried fruit only 
three or four cents and is a drug on the market at any price. It 
has taken about fifteen years to convince the public of this fact, 
although it was as plain fifteen years ago as it is to-day. The 
time is not far distant when tobacco dried in the air in the ordi- 
nary way will not be used for cigars for the same reason. The 
choice elements have been drawn out of the leaf by the power 
of the stalk, as the greater shall draw from the lesser is a well 
established law in botany. The best elements of the leaves are 
not retained when they are left in a crowded building with a 
mass of stalks that are in the first stages of decay. The exhal- 
ations from the stalk are absorbed by the leaf to a greater or 
less degree, if the weather is warm and damp the condition is 
worse than if cold and dry. 

There is positively no element in the tobacco stalk that can be 
of the slightest benefit to the leaf, it cannot add anything to the 
leaf but its poison odors, but they do draw virtue or oil of to- 
bacco from the leaf equal to six pounds to every one hundred 
pounds of the leaf grown. 

See report from Experiment Station, page 37. 

In this way, and for this reason a better cigar can be obtained 
than any other way. In the manufacture of chewing tobacco 
the bad condition of the leaf can be disguised by the use of 
licorice, sugar, molasses, and scores of nostrums, but the cigar 
stands on the naked merits of its composite leaf. 

If the leaf failed in its growth, or more likely in its cooking 
or curing, the result is a bad cigar; there is no help for it and 
the man who buys it is sorry before it is half burned out, and he 
feels as if he had wasted his money and he is likely to give the 
vender a wide berth in the future. If a generous friend makes 
him a present of a cigar of this kind, the friendship is apt to be 
cooled at least as long as the flavor of the bad cigar remains. 
The proper growth and ripening of all the leaves on the cigar 
plant with the proper curing at once is a guarantee for all good 
cigars. It will cost no more after you have once got ready t< 1 
cure than it does the present wasteful way. 



52 

The white vein is more prominent in seasons of abundant 
rains. The stalk and stem and veins grow rapidly', and a larger 
size in a wet season than in a dry one. The sap passages are both 
large and numerous and are hardened to a woody substance. 
Excessive wet seasons always produce this quality in tobacco 
crops. The remedy is in subsoiling and draining, get the roots 
of your plants above the water stand of your fields. This can be 
done by running furrows with a turning plow between the rows 
early in the season and turning them back again when the dry 
season comes. In cigar leaf the sure remedy is curing the leaf 
separate from the stalk, it is the only proper way to cure any 
tobacco and especially fillers and wrappers for cigars. The white 
vein in the crop of eighteen ninety-one will cost planters as much 
money as it would to have cured this crop by artificial heat. The 
extra weight and quality of tobacco would have more than paid 
the cost of the curing apparatus for the crop in Pennsylvania, 
Connecticut and Wisconsin. The difference between the two 
methods of curing the common Virginia leaf as shown by the 
North Carolina Experiment Station gives the leaf cure forty- 
one dollars per acre advantage. The difference where the white 
stem has to be contended with would be far greater. 



53 



CHAPTER XVI. 

PRIZE HOUSES. 

The Prize houses, so-called, are a distinctive and very costly 
feature of every loose leaf market There is no question about 
their being a necessity so long as men cure their tobacco leaves 
on the stalk and let them remain on the stalk until they find 
time or inclination to strip them off. These redrying or prize 
houses are not only very costly but they are wholly unneces- 
sary; wrong in their conception, wrong in theory, and wrong in 
practice. They are no more a necessity in a tobacco market 
than a redrying house for corn, or wheat, or oats, in a grain 
market. If the farmer did not dry his com before he brought 
it to the corn merchant then the corn dealer would need a dry 
house. If tobacco leaves are stripped from the stalk and cured 
they must, of necessity, be closely bulked at once. The bulk 
contains only what the barn cured at one curing and it is done 
in hot or warm weather, a sweat is at once organized in the 
small heap; the pile ferments, it is seasoned, and its keeping quali- 
ties are secured in the next ten days after curing. It is proof 
against the May sweat, that bugaboo of tobacco men. The May 
sweat comes to it in September, or any other month when the 
conditions of the May sweat are complied with. There is as 
much need to hang up a hay stack in the month of May that 
has been wintered over, as there is in hanging up a lot of tobacco 
cured and bulked in August, after it has lain in bulk two or 
three weeks. These great prize houses are filled with swarms 
of workmen who must be paid weekly wages, thus adding to the 
purchase cost of the leaf; the rent of the building or the interest 
on the money its cost must also be added to the purchase cost of 
the leaf. These sums added together make a large item of ex- 
pense and will cut heavily into the profit and loss account of 
every leaf dealer in the country. But we don't stop here with our 
expense bills; the leaf dealer buys one hundred pounds and sells 
but ninety pounds; every time he buys and sells one dollar's worth 
of tobacco he loses ten cents, bv loss of weight, and to this must 



54 

be added the wages of his prize house men and the rent of his 
building. We have handled about one hundred thousand pounds 
of leaf tobacco each year for a number of years past, and have 
not found need for a prize house nor have we during that time 
hung one leaf of tobacco for the purpose of redrying it, nor have 
we lost any tobacco by mould or other cause. If tobacco is 
cured right and compactly bulked as soon as cured, compact 
storage room is all that is necessary either with planter, leaf 
dealer or manufacturer. Tobacco is only fit for use after close 
storage and while it is hung in the air either with the planter 
or in the prize house or factory it is so much time lost, besides 
the weight which goes with the consequent and inevitable dis- 
sipation of the oil while being exposed to the air. As before 
said, the stalk draws organic matter of the highest importance 
from the leaf while in the process of curing. Wire cured tobacco 
comes in condition quicker than stalk cure in the same tempera- 
ture or degrees of moisture. This is the universal testimony and 
there are good reasons why. The waxy elements are in the leaf 
stripped from the stalk that have been extracted from the stalk 
cured leaf, and in an atmosphere that will at once limber up a 
leaf of this kind, this leaf that is minus this waxy element remains 
dry. The leaf that has been cured right has tin- oil in it, if the 
wax has not been melted it is in the cells and when cured the 
leaf feels dry to the touch, if overheated, say one hundred and 
sixty or eighty and two hundred as is often done, then a rich 
leaf of tobacco feels sticky to the touch, the < »il is dissipated or 
fried out of the leaf. When the leaf is hung up and as it becomes 
dry, the leaf is slow to come in case or limber enough to handle, 
and if the moisture in the air is sufficient to limber the leaf it also 
has in it sufficient moisture to cause it to mould if placed in bulk, 
hence the necessity of redrvingf houses. 



A (OOL, ICY FACT! ! 

The planters of the State of South Carolina have been grow- 
ing tobacco for the last six or seven years. They began with 
the " Snow System " and have continued it to the present time. 
They have produced about one thousand pounds per acre by 



55 



taking all the leaves from their plants as they ripen and curing 
them. Their crops have been sold at an average of twelve 
cents per pound; this has been done during the market year of 
1804 on the product of several million pounds. 

The Virginia markets during the same year report six cents 
per pound, the average price, while less than six hundred pounds 
i.s the crop per acre, as seen by the census reports for the last 
twenty years. The difference between six cents per pound with 
six hundred pounds per acre, and twelve cents per pound and 
one thousand pounds per acre is eighty-four dollars per acre, 
or three hundred and thirty-three per cent, in favor of the South 
Carolina planters. 

Has the Snow process of curing made the difference? 

Mr. "Fairbanks" settled the quantity per acre and the to- 
bacco buyer settled the quality of the tobacco. These frosty 
facts should be taken into consideration by every person who 
plants tobacco in 1895. 




56 



CHAPTER XVII. 



SPECIFICATIONS 

FOR BUILDING A "MODERN TOBACCO BARN " l6x20 FEET INSIDE 
MEASURE AND 20 FEET HIGH. 

Select a hill-side with a slope of about 2 U 1' inches to the foot. 
Commencing at the lower side, dig an excavation 16x20 feet into 
the hill-side. This will bring- the upper side about 5% feet from 
the surface, the floor being level. Then dig a trench around 
the four sides of the excavation, on the inside, one foot wide, of 
the same depth. Fill it with small cobble stones or coarse 
gravel to serve as a foundation and to act as a drain. On top 
of the stone or gravel build an 8-inch wall of good brick or 
stone with strong lime mortar. The wall should be 5^ feet high 
on the four sides, level on top, making a basement. In the 
lower or exposed side of the wall leave an opening for the door, 
in the center of the wall. The opening should be 5 feet high 
and 2 1 -' feet wide. Leave openings on each side of the door 3 
inches from the ground and 22 inches from the side walls, 
through which the ends of the stoves may project far enough 
to be within 4 inches of the outside face of the wall. The doors 
of the stoves open outwards and the fuel is fed from the out- 
side. Set the stoves three inches above the ground floor of the 
basement. Cover the stoves with brick arches extending 2 feet 
beyond the rear ends of the stoves, and leaving an air space of 
6 inches above and on each side of the stoves, forming jackets, 
the rear ends of the jackets to be left open. Directly over the 
stove doors and under the line or crown of the arches, leave 
openings in the wall 2x8 inches, the longer line horizontal. 
These are to admit fresh air as needed around the stove and 
within the arch. Covers to fit them regulate the quantity of air 
as required. In addition to these openings, two others are left. 



57 

one alongside each stove 10 inches square and with the tops level 
with the surface outside. Through these openings conduits made 
of one inch oak plank 10 inches wide for the top and bottom, 
and 8 for the sides, project and are extended inside the base- 
ment its whole length, sunk even with the top of the earth floor. 
Provide these conduits each with four holes 10 inches long and 
4 inches wide through the cover, with sliding covers. These are 
to allow cool air to be admitted to the basement independent 
of what is let in through the open arches. This completes the 
basement. The chimneys as illustrated in the " interior of base- 
ment " can be improved upon by extending the return flues to 
the outside of basement, through the wall, and build the chimney 
on the outside, to the height of the basement wall, where the 
terra cotta can be placed and clamped to the outside of the gable 
end of the barn as easily as on the inside, or run the chimney 
of brick all the way up which will leave the entire interior space 
in the tobacco room clear for the curing of the leaf. Heretofore 
the terra cotta have been put up inside, where they have occu- 
pied space that was valuable to the curer. 

The barn superstructure is built as follows: Sills 4x6 inches 
are framed and set on the walls, the 4-inch side resting on the 
walls. Set the joists and lay the floor strips 3^ by 1^ inches, 
leaving open space i£ inches between each of them, except those 
within 2 feet of the walls on three sides. Here the floor is closely 
laid. The floor is open in strips at the door end of the build- 
ing. Set the studding exactly 18 inches apart. Set the rafters 
one-third pitch, make the sheeting of good square-edged planks. 
Shingle the roof. In the sheeting and shingles leave an opening 
15 feet long and 8 inches wide at the peak of the roof for the 
ventilator, which is made and shipped by us. Sheathing paper 
is nailed on the joists and the whole is ceiled. Each pair of 
rafters must have collar or wind beams made of plank 6 inches 
wide and i-| inches thick, fastened securely at the foot 6 inches 
above the plates. The first set of scaffold beams is set 7 feet 
from the floor on two sides and one end of the building. The 
next set is set 6 feet above the first. The window frames are 
for two 6 light 10x12 glass. The frames are set one in each 
end 8 feet from the floor. The stanchions will be set by us in 
all cases. The conduits above mentioned when preferred. 



58 



BILL OF FRAMING FOR MODERN BARN. 

We append below detailed specifications, measurements, etc., 
of the Modern Barn. The planter can usually buy the main 
materials, except perhaps the proper shaped stoves and chim- 
neys, near home. What are put down as " Inside Fixtures " 
we supply ourselves. They are all patented, not only in them- 
selves, but their application to the barn; and without them the 
barn is of no value for curing tobacco. They are all officially 
stamped, and any person caught imitating and using them, or 
selling them, will be promptly prosecuted. The planter can 
build the barn and we will supply the Inside Fixtures, or we can 
supply all the materials and send experienced men to erect and 
put it into perfect operation. In the latter case, to cover all out- 
lays, the barn will cost from $475 to $550, depending 011 distance, 
local conveniences, etc. 

20Xl6 FEET INSIDE MEASUREMENT. 

2 Sills 4x6—21 feet long 84 feet. 

2 Sills 4x6 — 17 feet long 68 

1 1 Sleepers 2x9 — 17 feet long 208 

4 Corner Posts 4x6 inches — 20 feet long 160 

4 Door and Window Posts 4x4 — 20 feet 108 

44 Studding 2x4 — 20 feet long 57 2 

2 Plates 2x4 — 21 feet long - -8 

2 Plates 2x4 — 17 feet long 

8 Pieces 1^x6 — 16 feet long iS( ' 

24 Rafters 2x4 — 12 feet long 200 

Sheeting 1x12 inches 45° 

Flooring 1x3 inches 3°° 

Total 2280 " 

DRESSED LUMBER. 

Drop Siding 1x8 inches — 2000 feet. 
Ceiling ^x8 " — 2000 k ' 

Corner Boards 1x4 — 80 feet. 
Ventilator complete. 
Scaffold Braces — 50 feet. 
Scaffolds 1x9 — 22? feet. 
Paper Lining — /2 pounds. 
4000 Shingles. 



59 



DOOR FRAMES, ETC. 

Door Frame 3x6 feet. 

Door 3x6 feet. 

Hinges and Lock. 

Nails for entire building. 

2 Window Frames and Sash — 8 lights glazed — 10x12. 

INSIDE FIXTURES. 

4 Sets Stanchions. 
52 Racks. 
728 Sticks. 

1 Set Pulleys, Drums, etc. 
25 Baskets. 

BASEMENT. 

4300 Brick Wall, 5-i feet high. 
2 Stoves 17x24 inches x 4 feet. 
Flues for stoves in basement. 
Terra-Cotta Chimneys, 27 feet high. 
Conduits for basement — 120 feet. 
Door and Frame. 
Four or four and one-half feet, seven wire Sticks for the log 
barn, to use on the tier-poles. 



6o 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



WHAT LEADING PLANTERS SAY ABOUT SNOWS 
MODERN TOBACCO BARX AND STICKS. 

THE SNOW STICK UNEQUALLED. 




THE TESTIAK >NY ( >F T\Y< ) YEARS. 



THE "-NOW BARN AND STICK UNEQUALLED — IT HAS EVERY 

REQUISITE NECESSARY TO YIELD THE LARGEST PROFIT 

in THE TOBACCO PLANTER. 

Air. F. M. Rogers, of Florence, S. C, wrote as follows in 1890: 
" As before stated, I have tried myself or seen tried nearly all 
the methods of hanging the leaves — namely, horizontally, which 
is too tedious; stringing with the needle and twine, just as objec- 
tionable, besides running the leaves too close together, unless 
pains are taken to separate each leaf, which kills too much time; 
next, rubber bands, which is the most expeditious way to till a 
barn, but by far in the most objectionable condition to have it, 
from the fact that you have it pressed tightly together — especially 
is this the case when the tobacco wilts. There is little chance of 
heat getting between the leaves at the proper time; you can make 
no calculation. The circulation of heated air passes up through 
the opening between the sticks, where it will benefit only the out- 
side leaves; very little going between them, where it is chiefly 
needed. You are apt to cure it too green or yellow. Even if 
you should strike it right, it cures a dingy, dull reddish color, 
rather than the clear yellow which is the aim of every curer to 



6i 

obtain. The stem will be hard to kill out, will have to continue 
on the leaf too long, and run the risk of further damaging its 
color and detract from its weight. It is poor economy to save a 
dollar or so in filling a barn and lose $30 or $40 by imperfect 
curing. 

" The Snow Stick I have found satisfactory in every way. 
Barns can be quickly filled ; each leaf is properly spaced ; the ven* 
tilation is equalized in every way. More tobacco can be suc- 
cessfully cured in one barn than when strung in any other way. 
I have not space to go into minute explanation of its merits, but 
suffice it to say that it is the best arrangement on which to hang 
tobacco within my knowledge. In a word, the Snow Stick is 
unequalled." 

In 1890, Mr. Rogers writes thus: 
Capt. YV. H. Snow, High Point, N. C. 

Dear Sir: — Yours of the 4th inst. at hand. I am a stronger 
advocate of tobacco cured off the stalk than ever. That the leaf 
cured in this way is far superior, I am fully convinced, from 
handling it in our manufacturing business during the last few 
months. For the farmer, it is the way to get the greatest profit 
from an acre, because it can be saved and cured better; and that 
it is heavier, I know from experience. 

Yours truly, 

F. M. ROGERS, Jr. 

DOUBLE TESTIMONY. 

A VIELD OF AT LEAST ONE THIRD MORE BY THE " SNOW TOBACCO 
STICK" — FIFTY-THREE DOLLARS PER ACRE FROM PRIM- 
INGS — $340.OI PER ACRE REALIZED. 

Earl_\- in 1890,' Mr. L. F. Lucas, of Lucama, North Carolina, 
wrote : 

Capt. W. H. Snow, High Point, N. C. 

Dear Sir: — I cured all my crop of tobacco last year (twenty-five 
acres) on the Snow Tobacco Stick, and think that my yield was 
at least one-third more than it would have been if I had cultivated" 
and cured the old way, stalk and all together. I commenced 



62 

priming and curing on July oth. In this priming I did not get 
the lower leaves off so as to properly plow and hill my tobacco. 
When I took this tobacco out of the barn I shipped it to the Hender- 
son market (Cooper's). Mr. Cooper had it graded, and sold it 
Jnly 29th for 10 cents, 30 cents, 65 cents, 41 cents, and 11 cents, 
making an average, with trash out, of about $23, and netting one 
about $23 per acre. I primed and worked out my tobacco again 
about July 26, with better results — about $30 per acre. My tobacco 
was then a full growing crop, and I with $53 per acre in my 
pocket or paid to my creditors. My neighbors all used the Snow 
Sticks, and got good prices for their tobacco, and more money 
per acre than those who did not use the Snow Stick. I sold 
tobacco cured 011 the Snow Stick for $2 per pound. I think 
each and even' tobacco farmer should have a set of the Snow 
Sticks for each barn that he may have. I would recommend this 
even to those who will not part from the old method of curing 
the stalk, as they could make a net saving of enough tobacco that 
they would otherwise throw away to buy half a dozen sets of 
Snow Sticks, and 1 am sure that: 1 know of no other stick on the 
market that I would have as a gratis when I could get the Snow 
Stick at the price he asks for it. Our poeple are preparing for 
;i large crop this year, and I am sure you Will sell a set of your 
sticks for each new barn going up in this section, where their 
merits have been so well tested, and so much saved that has here- 
tofore keen thrown away — yes, enough to pay the expenses of 
the tobacco crop, and that would otherwise l>e cropped off and 
thrown on the ground. Hoping you will send your agent 
around to sell more sticks in this section, in time enough for the 
fanner^ to save all their primings, I am, 

Yours very truly, L. F. LUCAS. 

X'ote. — With this letter the warehouse receipts were sent us. 

< >n the _>d inst. Mr. Lucas wrote thus: 
1 apt. W. H. Snow, Superintendent Modern Tobacco Barn Co. 

Dear Sir: — I have not heard the first complaint from any one 
who used the Snow Tobacco Stick this year. Three-fourths of 
the farmers used them this year in this section, and say that they 
will want more next year. I know of one man who turned to the 
stalk tobacco cure this year, but savs now that he never expects 



63 

to cure another stalk. On November 20, 1890, I sold one curing 
at T. X. Jones & Co.'s warehouse. Raleigh, for $340.01 net. This 
curing was made <m the Snow Stick, and was a piece of tobacco 
that I took all off the stalk at one time, except one priming, and 
worked up a larger proportion of heavy wrappers than any curing 
I ever saw. The result was as follow- s: 

187 pounds Tips, at 10^ cents $19 63 

65 pounds Lugs, at 21^ cents 14 62 

[092 pounds Wrappers, at $28 net 305 76 

Total $340 01 

This curing, as you see, weighed 1344 pounds, and I am sure 
that I will have 500 pounds more on the same acre, and it will 
bring somewhere near $500 per acre at the present low- price of 
mahogany wrappers. If heavy wrappers were worth now what 
they were last year in February, the one curing would have sold 
for $500. I will send you a few pounds of heavy wrappers that 
were cured on the Snow Stick, to put on exhibition at your 
office. 

Wishing you much success in manufacturing the Snow Sticks, 
Dixie Darling, etc., at your new site in Oxford, I am yours, 

Very truly, L. F. LUCAS. 

INCONTESTABLE EVIDENCE. 

Cartersville, Va., March 19th. 
( 1 >rrespondence Southern Tobacconist. 

Messrs. Editors: — It is a singular fact that the majority of 
mankind resist change, innovation, what we call progress; never- 
theless, the world moves on and advances, otherwise we would 
still live in the dark ages, as possibly we do, in ignorance of the 
fact, by comparison with what is to come after us. 

After all, it is probably best .for mankind and the world that we 
do not accept new things until they have proved themselves un- 
der the crucial test of time to be worthy of acceptance, else the 
world would move too fast. This resistance to progress acts as 
a governor to keep the machinery regulated. 

No class of persons are as slow to adopt new things as tobacco 
planters. Manv of them are content to remain in the ruts of two 



6 4 

centuries, where they will probably die, leaving them and nothing 
else as a legacy to posterity. 

Under the head of " Progress Among the New Things in To- 
bacco Culture," I wish to call your attention to what is known as 
" Leaf Curing,'' that is, beginning at the bottom and gathering 
the good leaves, from two to four at a time, as they mature and 
are ready for curing. 

Tobacco should always be planted as early as possible and on 
quick, rich soil, with plenty of vegetable mould and manure of 
some kind in the land. With a favorable season, you can begin to 
gather the leaves in from sixty to seventy days. This should be 
done in baskets prepared for the purpose, and with care not to 
bruise. They are carried to the house and then taken from the 
baskets and hung on sticks or strings. By far the best device that 
I know of being the Snow Stick, described in your journal; indeed, 
I do not see how this can be improved on. In a week or two 
these same plants will be ready for another gathering of leaves, 
and so on to the end of the season. 

Now, Mr. Editor, I do not speak of this matter from hearsay 
or reading, but from actual trial and experience. After a thor- 
ough tc>t of it during the past curing season, I unhesitatingly 
pronounce it the best method I have ever seen, tried or heard of 
for housing tobacco. It cures better and more quickly. The 
quality of the leaf is better. You can begin by the 15th of July 
t< 1 house your crop, and instead of having to crowd this work into 
a very short time, as is usual, you have almost the entire summer 
for it. You will make more pounds to the acre than you can 
possibly do by the old process. You will not decrease the weight 
of the leaf. Von will reduce the risk of loss from frost to a mini- 
mum. You will give employment to a class of labor heretofore 
unemployed. 

Without doubt this is a departure from old methods in the line 
of progress; it is a great change, the new process that will give 
us a much higher grade of tobacco. I cannot too strongly urge 
my brother planters not to pass it by, but to look into it, study 
it, and you will adopt it. You cannot afford to be left by all 
other sections in the improvements that are taking place, in the 
varieties, the culture, and the methods of handling and curing 
this staple crop. 

Trulv vours, EDUMUXD R. COCKE. 



65 



TESTIMONY OF MR. PRICE. 

In 1889 Mr. J. V. Price, of Hogan, N. C, wrote as follows: 

Hogan, N. C, November 18, 1889. 
Capt. W. H. Snow: 

1st. Your plan has saved tobacco for me which otherwise 
would have been lost, and it brought me more money than the 
leaves higher up the stalk. 

2d. I saved 3500 pounds that would have been lost, and sold 
it at an average of 20 cents per pound. This is a low estimate. 

^\. The way is better, because the work is lighter and more 
systematic. 

4th. It requires one-half less barn room. 

5th. It requires much less fuel, and is, I am quite sure, the 
correct way to handle tobacco, and I recommend every progres- 
sive farmer to give it a fair trial. Yours, 

J. V. PRICE. 

( )n December 2d Mr. Price writes as follows of his 1890 crop: 

Capt. W. II. Snow, Superintendent Modern Tobacco Barn Co., 

High Point, N. C. 

Dear Sir: — The Snow Barn and Sticks have come to stay in 
this neighborhood, and no intelligent man having once tried your 
process would ever return to the old stalk cure. Below I give 
you particulars of my crop, etc. I planted 90 acres, got a good 
stand and all topped by July 15th. Commenced priming same 
date; cured 20,000 pounds cutters and smokers, which will bring 
an average of 15 cents, most of them being sold at this date. By 
the old method these would have been thrown away. The bal- 
ance of the crop was cured as soon as the cutters were off; got 
35,000 pounds of No. 1 wrappers and fillers; remainder unfortu- 
nately got over-ripe and lost in body and texture. Your Barn, 
however, came to the rescue, and the 15,000 showed up fairly 
well — much better than I could have done by curing on the 
stalk. The 35,000 pounds is as good rich tobacco as was ever 
grown in North Carolina, or anywhere else; the 15,000 pounds 
would have been the same, but for my misfortune in having only 
two instead of three barns. I cured it all in two Snow Barns 



66 

and nine log 1 tarns on the Snow Stick. To have cured the old 
way would require thirty log barns. I saved ioo cords of wood, 
and gained, I am quite sure, 10,000 pound.- of tobacco by 
your sticks. Would have gained more had I had two more 
Modern Barns. The advantage of your process lies in its being 
itematic, a uniform cure is always certain, and the making 
of more distinct types. It generates a pride and desire to do bet- 
ter and learn more about tobacco. Knowing what I do now, I 
could without any trouble have cured my crop in three following 
distinct types: smokers and cutters, rich fillers, and mahogany 
wrappers. By taking the leaves at the proper time, no inferior 
or nondescript tobacco will be raised or cured by your process. 

To s ''i that I feel confident of the success of your pro- 

my brother and I will next year plant 150 acres in tobacco, 
and will build 12 more barns on the Snow plan. With our expe- 
rience, we know we can handle it without any trouble. I would 
not now be afraid to plant 500 acres, had I the capital. 

Wishing you every suco 

Yours trulv. I. V. PRICE. 



Till-; GRANDEST DISCOVERY OF THIS 
AGRICULTURAL AGE. 

Richmond, Va., November i~ 
VV. H. Snow, Esq., High Point, \ 

My Hear Sir: — You ask my opinion of the " Snow Parn *' pro- 
• of curing tobacco by due.-, as compared with the old way. 

I will a iu by saying just as the scythe and cradle was 

superior to the old hand sickle, and at last the McCormack 
reaper was superior to them all in point of economy in saving all 
kinds of grains over the old way, the "Snow Parn " is relatively 
as far ahead of the old mode of curing tobacco, just as the M 
mack reaper opened up markets for our wheat and dour the 
world over, making it possible to supply the world with bread, 
a thing that would have been impossible by the old method of 
harvesting. The new mode of due curing " bright " by Snow's 
process will revolutionize the tastes of tobacco consumers the 
world over, by making it possible to furnish the mild, silky 
cutter, smoker and filler to fill a want that could not possibly be 
filled through the old wav of curiner. 



6/ 

I will sum up the advantages of "Snow's" process as follows: 
It cures tobacco as it ripens, always catching- the leaf in its best 
condition for curing; neither too ripe nor too green, and always 
curing bright, regardless of adverse seasons. 

This mode insures early summer temperature cures, and con- 
sequently yellow cure, while the old way is hazardous at best and 
under the most favored conditions. 

All manufacturers are aware of the great improvement brought 
about bv depriving the leaf of the main stem before sweating it 
sweet; that is the secret of St. James Parish Perique tobacco 
being so vastly superior to other kinds, for the mid rib is taken 
out while it is semi-green and before the leaf has time to absorb 
its objectionable flavors, and hence the Perique is faultless as a 
smoke of high and distinctive flavor. 

Mr. Snow correspondingly improves the quality of the leaf by 
stripping it from the stalk, and if he could go further and deprive 
it of the mid rib, its quality would be still further enriched, — so 
much for quality. 

Now for economy. While the stalk men are waiting for the 
top leaves to get ripe and the rest of the plant to get over-ripe 
and otherwise deteriorate, the Snow economist is gathering and 
curing his by twos and fours. When the stalk man is read} to 
cut his. Snow has his all in the barn, beautifully cured; or, which 
is more probable, has it marketed and the money in his pocket, 
say just four and a-half months after planting, leaving possibly 
two top leaves on the stalk, to be taken when they fully granulate 
in the late chilly fall, to supplj the market with the sweet meaty 
tillers and rich mahogany wrappers. 

Snow's tobacco is safe — yes, safe every year; no frost scare has 
forced him to cut it green, and he has no trouble or anxiety with 
low frost temperature in curing, no miss-cures, no vexation in 
stripping and assorting by unskilled hands, for nature assorted 
his for him in its order of ripening. All this is the economy side. 

Now, with Snow's Barn, Burley tobacco, new ground or old 
sod laud tobacco will make the finest cigarette and pipe stock 
(resembling the Turkish tobacco in flavor), the best in the world 
for this exclusive purpose, and adding from 300 to 500 per cent, 
to its market value over the air-cured product of Kentucky. It 
can all be cured fancy brights. Old ground Burley will make 
the finest export stock, without an equal in mildness, color, lex- 



ture and quality combined. It will force a market for itself in 
countries which our Virginia and North Carolina brights have 
never been able to reach on account of the uncertainty of our 
annual yields, the mishaps of our cures and the almost interdic- 
tory price it demands in years of scarcity. By the Snow process 
we can always furnish foreigners with matchless cures every year, 
bad crop years and good years alike — since all Burley cures yel- 
low by flues. 

We have a lot of primings, usually left on the stalk in the 
field by Kentucky planters, cured by Snow's Barn from the crop of 
Wm. Z. Thomson, Georgetown. Ky., that is worth from $20 to $25 
per 100, as Cutters, on our market to-day. Had the whole crop 
been cured by Hues it would, with the same successful manage- 
ment, have realized him $30 to $40 crop round. 

In conclusion we regard the Snow Barn the grandest discovery 
of this agricultural ago. Respectfully, 

[Signed] ^ S. P. CARR. 

FORTY YEARS" EXPERIENCE. 

Hyco, Va., November 24th, 1890. 
Capt. W. II. Snow. High Point, N. C. 

My Dear Sir: — An experience of forty years in raising every 
class of tobacco grown in the United States enables me to say 
that the Modern Tobacco Barn, in all it- appurtenances and fix- 
tures, meets every requirement for curing tobacco better than any 
that lias ever yet been devised, for it is constructed on scientific 
principles in applying artificial heat in drying the tobacco leaf on 
the most approved method, as regards safety, economy and cer- 
tainty in fixing the color and preserving the quality. And it is 
surely destined to come into use for curing all the classes and 
types of tobacco, when its merits and capabilities shall become 
known. 

It will require time, however, to bring it into general use 
among a class of farmers who heretofore have clung tenaciously 
to old methods, very many of whom look with suspicion and 
prejudice upon anything new and progressive in any department 
of tobacco raising. I know this prejudice to exist, for I have 
been combating it for 20 vears. in efforts to introduce newer and 



69 

better varieties for the several classes and types of tobacco raised 
in this country. But there are unmistakable evidences that the 
spirit of improvement is being aroused, for greater progress has 
been made in the tobacco planting industry during the past de- 
cade than in the 50 years previous. 

The Snow Barn is sure to win confidence and favor after a 
fair trial, because it meets the requirements of progressive to- 
bacco farming for the finest class of tobacco, as no other barn 
has ever done. It came to fill more than one desired want, and 
has come to stay, and, like every other useful invention, it is des- 
tined to be improved upon through supplemental invention in 
the direction of perfection, until no planter can afford to engage 
in tobacco planting without availing himself of the use of the 
best methods of curing his crops. 

Yours very truly, 

R. L. RAGLAND. 

The following, from the pen of Mr. J. B. Smith, of Milton, 
North Carolina, will be read with interest and profit. It was 
originally published in the Southern Tobacco Journal: 

" As I have had, perhaps more experience in the process of 
stripping leaves from the stalk in the field than any other planter, 
I have been requested to prepare an article for the benefit of our 
farmers in the Golden Belt of Virginia and North Carolina. I 
will say, by way of beginning, that if the object of the tobacco 
grower be simply to house his crop in the most expeditious man- 
ner, regardless of color and texture, let him adhere to the old 
process of cutting the plant. But if the object of the planter be 
to realize the greatest profit from an acre of land, at the least 
expense, then I unhesitatingly advise him to adopt the " new pro- 
cess " and strip off every leaf of his tobacco, as he will not only se- 
cure better color and texture, but also superior flavor and greater 
weight. Now, right here, Mr. Editor, while conceding the su- 
periority as to the color, ninety-nine out of a hundred farmers 
who have never tried the new process will declare that it is not 
true about the increase of weight. And yet I am confident that 
I could convince the most incredulous and ignorant farmer in 
either State of the truth of the assertion, if I could have him 
come and see with his own eyes and feel with his own fingers. I 



70 

can show him tobacco grown on new ground, without the use of 
a pound of fertilizer, one stick of which, with only 32 leaves, just 
as cured, will weigh 1 pound 6 ounces. Now, this is equivalent 
to over a pound to 4 plants, while from a whole barn taken from 
the same land and cured on the stalk I challenge any one to find 
five stalks the leaves from which will weigh as much — or, better 
still, to pick 50 leaves out of that barn that will weigh as much. 
And the color and texture of the barn-cured on the stalk does 
not compare with the one pulled off, although it was the picked 
barn of my crop and cured by a man hired at a big price, in order 
to make a fair test, who, upon looking at the tobacco, was confi- 
dent he could equal my barn of leaves, but upon finishing the 
curing, declared that no living man could cure that tobacco as 
well on the stalk as if the leaves were pulled off, and further said 
he never intended to cut another plant of tobacco for himself. 
But apart from ocular demonstration. I think I can convince 
every intelligent person that tobacco cured off the stalk is 
heavier. Every farmer knows that fodder pulled off and cured is 
heavier and more nutritions than when the stalk is cut and the 
blades permitted to cure on it. Because it is one of the laws of 
nature that applies to all animal as well as plant existence, "for 
the body, in the last struggle for existence, to draw sustenance 
from its extremities." And the tobacco plant is no exception to 
this rule. As soon as the stalk is severed this struggle begins; 
the stalk drawing sustenance from the leaves, or, as the tobacco- 
curer expresses it, "the sap is driven in the process of curing 
from the tip of the leaf upwards through the fibres and stem into 
the stalk." By the process of stripping the leaves, all of this 
drainage is prevented, for in less than five minutes after a leaf is 
broken off, a gum exudes from the stem and hermetically seals 
the pores in the butt end of the stem, and in the curing process 
all of the oils are retained in the leaf, which increases its weight 
and elasticity. 1 also find the stem and fibres are very much 
smaller. And the leaf when cured, instead of possessing a glued 
appearance, has a soft, spongy look, and feels like kid skin. 

I will now briefly enumerate some of the most important 
advantages the new process has over the old: — 

1st. The planter can begin to house his crop from two to four 
weeks earlier. 

2d. Everything is saved and there is no loss by " firing on the 
hill." 



7i 

3d. As the lower leaves are pulled off, those left on the stalk 
ripen up and yellow more rapidly, which enables the planter to 
get in his crop earlier in the season. 

4th. Tobacco can be cured a more uniform color. 

5th. Less fuel will be required. 

6th. The risk of setting fire to the barn will be greatly lessened. 

7th. The tobacco can be stored in a much smaller space, and 
with no danger of losing color, or of mould. 

8th. By this process enough leaves, which are lost by the old 
process, will be saved to pay for the fertilizer necessary to grow 
the crop, also to pay for all extra labor needed in housing the 
same. 

9th. It will help to solve the problem of over-production, 
by grading up the tobacco in our section so as to place us above 
the competition of those sections which grow low grades of 
tobacco, which in the past few years has proved so detrimental 
to our pockets. 

Round Teak, X. C, September 12, 1890. 
Capt. W. H. Snow, High Point, N. C. 

Dear Sir: — I have cured two barns of tobacco on your sticks, 
and I am well pleased with them. The most tobacco raisers in 
my settlement have been to see me curing, and will all want your 
sticks to cure their next year's crop. I will be able to sell to all 
the tobacco raisers in my section next year. We have got all 
our lugs cured, the finest lugs I ever saw. Yours truly, 

WILLIAM GOLDING. 

Clover Depot. Ya., November 1, 1890. 
Capt. W. H. Snow, High Point, N. C. 

My Dear Sir: — Would say in regard to your Wire Sticks that 
I am more than pleased with the result of them. I made the 
finest crop of tobacco I ever made in my life this year, cured 
almost my entire crop on your Wire Sticks, and would have 
cured every leaf on them had I had sticks enough. Would not 
be without them for double the cost of them. Think I will 
realize three hundred dollars per acre for a large portion of my 
crop. Would advise all who want to make a fine article of bright 
tobacco to use Snow's Wire Sticks. They are the best on the 
market. I am yours truly, 

A. Y. WOMACK. 



72 




TESTIMONY TO BE WEIGHED. 



THE COST l >F THE BARN PAID FOR BY TWO CUR- 
INGS OF PRIMINGS THAT HAD BEEN THROWN 

AWAY. 

Oxford, N. C, July 24, 1890. 
Modern Tobacco Barn Co., High Point, N. C. 

Prejudiced as I was against the Snow Barn before I knew its 
merits, I make haste to congratulate you on the wonderful suc- 
cess of my first curing in the barn built by you for me. Your 
builder finished it on last Saturday night. On Monday it was 
filled with priming leaves. They have been taken out to-day. 
The cure is perfect. I will fill the barn again on Monday. The 
two curings of leaves that I have for years thrown away will 
more than pay the cost of the barn. 

T. M. CURREN. 



73 

McCray, N. C, January 16, 1890. 

By using the Snow Sticks in log barns — 

1st. We saved about 1200 pounds of tobacco that we consider 
would have been wasted — about $200 worth. That is what we 
saved in one year and what it brought. 

2d. The labor is a good deal less getting a pound of tobacco 
from the field into market. 

3d. We can cure a crop of tobacco by the new plan in one-half 
the barn room that it would take to cure it in the old way. 

4th. It don't take any more than one-half the fuel it would take 
to cure stalk and all. It is an improvement that we can cheer- 
fully recommend to our brother farmers. 

Your friends, J. F. & G. T. KING. 

Home, Green Co., Tenn., November 28, 1890. 
Capt. W. H. Snow: 

I was born and raised in Southwest Virginia. Raised and 
cured tobacco for sixteen years on the stalk. I moved to Green 
county, Tenn.; there I found the model of the Snow Stick. I 
took it in study, and made my order. The sticks being delayed 
by railroad caused me to cure five barns by the old process; 
I then received them in time to cure two barns. After curing the 
first barn, I never was better pleased in my life. Cures finer and 
with less labor and less fuel, and cures a great deal more in a 
barn. I think it much heavier and better than the tobacco cured 
the old way. This is my experience in one year's usage. As 
for my experience, I never expect to cure any other way, only on 
the Snow Stick. Nine hands — men, women and children — are 
sufficient to fill a 20-foot barn in a day. 

I will give you the beauty of this process: isf. You save your 
primings and cure them. 2d. You then save your lugs, and so 
( in till you are done curing. You bulk your tobacco as you cure 
it, and when you are done curing you are done grading; and, 
moreover, I am satisfied an industrious farmer can save enough 
primings the first year to save fertilizer and other expenses. By 
removing the lower leaves the tobacco ripens and thickens up 
faster; the reason why, because it gets more air. 

Brother farmers, I will say this to you: If you will take hold 
and try those sticks you will never use any other. 

' Yours truly, JOHN J. FELTY. 



74 

The cashier of the First National Bank, Winston, N. C, writes: 

February 26, 1890. 

I have used the Snow Tobacco Stick in log barn during the 
season. I had about six acres in tobacco, and realized at the 
warehouse in Winston, where I sold my tobacco, $799. I think 
the device made for me not less than $200. One of its great 
advantages over the old method of curing tobacco is, that by its 
use. the early leaves of the crop are saved, and in addition to this, 
when the crop is all housed it is finished and ready for market, 
saving time and labor in the way of stripping the dried or cured 
tobacco on the stalk. 

J. W. ALSPAUGH. 

FROM FORSYTHE C< >UNTY. 

Winston. X. C, November 19, [889. 
Mr. W. 11. Snow: 

I am well pleased with the Modern Tobacco Barn bought of 
you, and would not be without it for twice its cost. I saved all 
my priming leaves, cured them up nicely, and sold them for a 
fair price early in the season — the money coming in nicely to pay 
expenses of saving the remainder of the crop. By handling the 
tobacco in your baskets the leaves are not bruised, and are saved 
in better condition than when handled on the stalk. Also, it does 
not require nearly as much wood or barn room to cure a crop as 
in the old way. The barn has proven very satisfactory to me, 
and I can heartily recommend it to others. 

Very truly yours, S. A. OGBURN. 

WOULDN'T TAKE $1000 FOR IT. 

I have used Captain Snow's Modern Barn and am exceedingly 
well pleased with it. I saved plenty of primings this year to fully 
pay for the barn. This tobacco I have always thrown away, and 
it was never worth anything to me. The cures I have made in 
the Snow Barn this year are far ahead of anything I ever cured 
in the old barns. I think the tobacco is worth nearly as much 
again. I have been growing tobacco about 3? years, and the 
Snow Barn is bv far the best thine: to cure tobacco in I ever saw. 



75 

I do think that tobacco cured in this barn will always average 
fully one-third more than in the old way. I would not be with- 
out the barn for $1000 if I could not get another. I like it, am 
pleased in every way, and expect to use it as long as I raise 
tobacco. WM. MOTLEY. 

Chatham, Pittsylvania Co., Va. 

WONDERFUL RESULTS AT EARLY CURING. 

The following testimonials show what the Snow Barn can do 
in the way of early curings: 

Oxford, N. C, June 20, 1890. 

Dear Sir: — We sold Wednesday, June 18th, a shipment of new 
crop tobacco from L. F. Lucas, of Wilson Co., this State, at an 
average of $46.10 per hundred. Mr. Lucas writes us that this 
tobacco was planted between April 25th and May 1st, 1890, 
primed off about June 9th, and sold as above. This beats any- 
thing ever accomplished in the cultivation, curing and sale of 
bright tobacco. As Mr. Lucas used your patent stick, which was 
a prominent factor in accomplishing this wonderful result, we 
take pleasure in sending you this sale. With best wishes, 

Yours' truly, DAVIS & GREGORY. 



Summerfield, N. C, November 12, it 
Capt. W. H. Snow: 

I would say that I have used the Snow Sticks in my log barns 
for two years, and after calculation find that I have saved 225 
pounds of tobacco per acre that I had formerly been throwing 
away or losing entirely by the old plan of curing on the stalk. 
I have saved and sold my first primings for the two seasons at an 
average of $15.75 P er acre, which I consider clear profit. For 
my second primings last year I received $20 per hundred, which 
have been (by the old method of curing) my bottom leaves or 
trash lugs, that now sell at 4 or 5 cents per pound. 

The labor of getting a pound of tobacco from the field to the 
barn is less by the new plan, as the work is made lighter by leav- 
ing the stalks on the hills. I also find that it takes only half as 
much barn room and half the quantity of fuel to cure a crop by 
the new plan. I am pleased with and heartily recommend the 
new plan as an improvement that my brother farmers should 
adopt. Yours truly, ' J. M. McMICHAEL. 



7 6 



AN EXPERT'S TESTIMONY. 

To Those Interested: 

I have been asked to give my opinion upon the practical mode 
of the process of curing tobacco with the Snow Stick, or more 
commonly known as the wire process. I preface my remarks by 
saying I have been in tobacco, have handled and been intimately 
associated with this great staple all my life, and have watched 
closely every new device that has had for its object the improve- 
ment and lifting the burden off the shoulders of the producer, 
who had it to bear. 

I know that it don't take a Solomon to say it, but the man who 
invents these labor-saving tobacco-curing outfits should be classed 
as a benefactor of mankind. 

ist. By the use of the wire stick you can save the bottom 
leaves, which would otherwise be lost by firing. 

2d. It don't require experts to gather and string these leaves — 
chaps ten years old can do it as well as men. 

3d. By taking off the lower leaves as they mature you hasten 
the ripening of the plant — this alone is a decided advantage. 

4th. The primings, or bottom leaves, thus saved, when cured, 
make first and second-class cutters, which, under the old way, 
while waiting for the body and top of the plant to get fully 
ripe or " grained " for the knife, is lost entirely — all of which 
when secured can be cured in your barn with less fuel. But 
from observation in this section, I have found in my travels that 
fuel is of but second consideration at present, but when you get 
regularly into tobacco you will find this item of wood of consid- 
erable import, and yon would do well to commence in time to 
take care of it. 

When I read the strong endorsement of the Snow Stick process 
by such tobacco men as Major R. L. Ragland, Hyco, Va., and 
F. M. Rogers, Jr., Florence, S. C, together with many others, I 
could not hesitate to give my full endorsement. 

E. M. PACE, 
Manasrer Wilson Tobacco Warehouse. 



77 

Washington, D. C, June 26th, 1891. 

Dear Sir: — I have awakened a good deal of interest in Mary- 
land regarding improved methods of cure and culture of to- 
bacco, and have not hesitated to recommend your improved 
''Modern Barn" and fixtures. It would be well for you to have 
an agent in Baltimore at an early day, that the planters ma}- be 
supplied with wires, baskets, furnace, etc., etc. You are at lib- 
erty to use my name as endorsing your wire leaf system through- 
out. Advertise in the county papers of Prince George, Charles, 
Calvert, St. Mary's and Anne Arundel, and I think it will pay 
you. Truly yours, 

" THOS. N. COX RAD. 

Capt. Snow, High Point, N. C. 

Mr. Conrad was the Commissioner of Tobacco for the la^r 
census. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



SPECIAL XOTICE . 

PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION 

INTRODUCTION 

CHAPTER I 

CHAPTER II 

CHAPTER III— Plant beds . 

CHAPTER IV — Good soil necessary 

CHAPTER V — Setting out the crop 

CHAPTER VI — Worming and cultivating the crop 

CHAPTER VII — Cultivation continued . 

CFIAPTER VIII — Topping and suckering 

CHAPTER IX— Getting ready to cure . 

CHAPTER X — Curing fillers mahogany . 

CHAPTER XI— Bulking after curing 

CHAPTER Nil — Experiments showing the comparative 
value of curing tobacco upon the stalk, and the Snow- 
wire leaf cure ...... 

CHAPTER XIII— Bad effects of curing on the stalk 

CHAPTER XIV— Cigar leaf .... 

CHAPTER XV— White vein .... 

CHAPTER XVI— Prize houses 

A COOL, ICY FACT 

CHAPTER XVII — Specifications for building a " Modern 
Tobacco Barn" 16x20 feet inside measure and 20 feet 
high . ... . . . . 

BILL OF FRAMING FOR MODERN BARN 

CHAPTER XVIII — What leading planters say ab< »ut Snow's 
Modern Tobacco Barn and Sticks .... 

TESTIMONY TO BE WEIGHED 

AN EXPERT'S TESTIMONY .... 



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